Techaisle SMB Cost to Repair old PCs Report

SMBs' AVERAGE COST TO REPAIR PCs > 3 YEARS OLD CAN BE UPTO 1.65 TIMES THE COST TO REPAIR PCs < 3 YEARS
Survey of SMBs shows that Small Businesses spend US$326 per PC to repair PCs older than 3 years
Mid-Market Businesses spend even higher, US$401 per PC

San Jose, CA, April 30, 2009: The global economic crisis continues to impact SMBs worldwide. As SMBs rein in IT spending, the latest casualty is spending on replacement of existing desktops and notebooks. However, a recent survey shows that SMBs spend between US$326 to US$401 per PC on repairs on PCs that are older than 3 years old. A perception issue, to prolong the use of PCs for a longer period of time, may end up costing more. With the price of well-configured notebooks and desktops at historical lows, it may bode well for SMBs to replace their older PCs than continue to repair older installations.

The surveys were conducted across seven countries: US, UK, India, China, Australia, Brazil and Italy in the month of March 2009. The multi-country study also revealed that the average overall price to repair PCs is highest in the US, UK and Italy followed closely by China.

On average only 26% of businesses within 1-19 employee size segment have warranties on their PCs that are greater than 3 years
The survey also found that the cost to repair and upgrade a PC jumps to US$545 for small businesses if the PC being repaired is without warranty and has been upgraded. This is nearly the price of a new PC.

Average upgrade cost is US$99 per PC that is upgraded
When asked the top reasons for upgrading, SMBs mostly cited "adding memory" followed by "adding disk drive capacity". The respondents were also asked the reasons for upgrading their PCs. The responses most often given by them related to "PCs running slow" and "applications demanding more memory".

Hardware Failure followed by Software crashes highest in PCs greater than 3 years old
Small business respondents with PCs older than 3 years experienced network card failures nearly 8 times that of PCs with less than 3 years old. This was followed by power supply failures, motherboard failures, software crashes and virus attacks. Mid-market respondents experienced a similar trend with network card failures at 6 times followed by power supply failures and motherboard failures.

"While within small businesses, preventive maintenance is left to individual employees, the mid-market businesses rely more on their IT staff and departments to use management tools for effective preventive maintenance. What SMBs need to really think about is the planned retirement of PCs to keep their IT systems secure and running optimally", says Abhijeet Rane, Managing Partner and Senior Vice President, Techaisle.

Cost of fixing, repairing PCs

Survey results in the release are available for purchase as reports.

About Techaisle
Techaisle is a market research and consulting company focused on Emerging Markets, Emerging Technologies and Interactive Entertainment. Techaisle provides actionable data delivered as an answer to a specific question. Techaisle offers services in five major areas - Market Sizing; Survey Research of End Users; Survey Research of Distribution Channels; Custom Market Research; and Segmentation. Techaisle's segmentation algorithms are easily understood, easily deployable and drive actual sales and market understanding. Techaisle's blog can be read at http://techaisle.com/blog

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