Rising prices and pull-through purchases are fuelling a rebound in channel partner sentiment.
That’s according to analyst Omdia, whose latest global polling of channel partners found 66% now expect profits to grow in 2026.
That compares with the 60% who expected profits to decline when questioned in Q1.
Similarly, 60% of partners questioned now expect revenue to increase this year, compared with 45% who were bracing for a decline in Q1.
UK channel partner leaders at the recent Oxygen 250 dinner agreed that deepening memory shortages are acting as a double-edged sword for their businesses.
Computacenter, CDW and Softcat are among the large resellers to have acknowledged pull-through purchases fuelled a small, positive uplift in their latest numbers.
Talking to IT Channel Oxygen, Omdia Senior Research Director Rachel Brindley counselled that the raised spirits exposed in its latest poll could be short lived.
“Price increases are certainly having an impact, alongside customers pulling forward purchases to beat future rises,” she said.
“The big challenge will come later in the year and into 2027 when supply becomes even more constrained.”
Omdia’s research comes just two months after its Q1 data exposed “perhaps the most negative channel sentiment in two decades of analysis”.
The rollercoaster nature of the tech sector is also laid bare by Omdia’s latest data on the largest 18 publicly listed tech vendors.
The so-called ‘Tech Titans’ grew revenue by 28.3% year on year in Q1, well over their best-case forecast of 21.8% and their strongest growth for 15 years, the analyst found.
AI-fuelled layoffs are taking the gloss off their success, however, with Cisco the latest vendor giant to announce deep workforce cuts in the name of the two-lettered buzzphrase.
These industry goliaths announced layoffs totalling 58,000 staff in Q1, Omdia said.
