Windows dominates $6B North American POS market

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Mar. 15, 2006

Shipments of PC-based point-of-sale (POS) systems in North America grew 5 percent in 2005 to nearly $6 billion, market analyst IHL reported Wednesday. Microsoft's Windows operating systems continued their POS market dominance, representing 71 percent of 2005's POS terminal shipments, IHL said.

IHL noted that retailers in all vertical segments are looking to purchase POS hardware and software from multiple vendors. "With few exceptions, the dual vendor strategy is being pushed by lower cost hardware options that run on Microsoft Windows operating systems and Linux," IHL said.

Windows's 71 percent share of POS operating system shipments is about the same as what IHL reported for 2004. Windows XP Embedded and WEPOS (Windows Embedded for Point of Service) accounted for 12 percent of 2005 POS OS shipments, with the remaining 59 percent made up of other Windows variants, such as Windows CE, 9x, and NT/2000.

Linux, while still a minority player in the POS market, posted a "strong" 80 percent market share gain, increasing from 5 percent in 2004 to 9 percent last year, IHL said.

IHL noted that Intel Cereron and AMD Sempron processors were the most popular choices in POS hardware.

The market researcher also said that "specialty category killers," the market segment that includes such retailers as home centers, electronics, pet superstores, bookstores, sporting goods, and furniture, showed the strongest segment growth with 321,000 new terminals in 2005.

IHL president Greg Buzek said, "We are seeing strong interest among grocers in particular. Terminals with lower total cost-of-ownership than previous models and with touch-screen, LCD display interfaces appear to be in demand this year, particularly in grocery and other specialty retail segments."

IHL defines "POS" systems as "PC-based workstations, namely PC-class processor-based and LAN-available terminals," and specifically excludes "Electronic Funds Terminals."

Further details on IHL's "2006 North American Retail POS Terminal Study" are available here.

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