In addition to stand-alone POS terminals, which is the subject of the second quarter GSQ to will be mailed with the next Green Sheet issue, many other types of equipment are being sold to retailers by both banks and ISOs. If you are looking for information on a broader base of equipment than just dial-up, stand alone devices, we recommend the following study by IHL Consulting Group. The report, U.S. Point-of-Sale Market Study, reviews the shipments and installed base of POS terminals during 1998, and much more. According to the study, the total number of shipments increased 15%. Growth was fueled by new store increases, as well as equipment replacements due to year 2000, but the number of shipments to specialty retailers increased an astounding 35%. "Outlets such as Home Depot, Office Depot, Best Buy, and Barnes and Noble not only added new stores at astounding rates," said Greg Buzek, President of IHL Consulting Group, "but these new stores were often much larger in size than their existing stores. And each of these larger stores required more POS devices than ever before."
According to the study, IBM, NCR, and MICROS Systems had strong growth in POS sales across many segments but, as you might have guessed, Microsoft still fared well. Forty-two percent of new shipments were Windows 95/98 operating systems and 22% of new shipments were Windows NT. But MS-DOS and IBM990501's 4690 Operating System still represented over 71% of the total installed base at the end of the year. For more information on the study visit http://www.ihlservices.com.
