TBR Weekly Preview: March 25-29

We’re in a slower earnings period, which means fewer vendor-centric reports and more benchmarks and market landscapes. And at the end of the week, Accenture gets the early jump on 1Q19, as we analyze the company’s cloud-centric portfolio and overall performance.

Thursday

• Accenture will kick off the 1Q19 earnings season for services companies. While we expect Accenture’s revenue growth to taper compared to the company’s year-ago performance, investments in platforms such as SynOps, which addresses key pain points such as augmentation of human labor through automation across IT operations processes, strengthen the company’s position for long-term digital transformation opportunities. Additionally, we continue to closely monitor Accenture’s relationship with its Big Six partners, such as the recent launch of Accenture Microsoft Business Group (AMBG). While AMBG is a natural extension of the relationship between Accenture and Microsoft, it raises questions about the future of Avanade. (See Boz Hristov for additional details on Accenture.)
• In TBR’s 4Q18 Devices and Platforms Benchmark, we found that total benchmarked revenue declined 2.4% year-to-year to $142.6 billion as the device market ran up against global economic challenges, increased device saturation, and reduced consolidation opportunities. The biggest driver of devices revenue decline was sluggish sales for legacy smartphone vendors Apple and Samsung as the Western premium market becomes saturated and device life cycles lengthen. Outside Western markets, legacy smartphone vendors are being pressured by aggressive, more recent market entrants such as Huawei and OPPO, which are eroding share by offering aggressively priced midrange devices with premium features. Outside smartphones, the PC market grew despite silicon shortages. However, TBR predicts the Windows 10 refresh opportunity will begin to wane as PC vendors exhaust worldwide opportunities. Read more about the smartphone, PC, tablet and smart device markets, as well as the impacts of platform and solution trends, such as DaaS, in our full report. (See Dan Callahan for more.)

Friday

• TBR’s Accenture Cloud report will highlight Accenture’s evolution around key investment initiatives such as Journey to Cloud, as well as the company’s managed services positioning within the infrastructure management domain. Additionally, we continue to asses Accenture’s relationships with cloud buyers through the use of standardized, price-competitive offerings supported by highly specialized and certified talent.
• This month’s Digital Transformation Insights report focuses on two leading vendors, Accenture and IBM. Using TBR’s extensive coverage of these companies across IT services, management consulting, cloud, software, IoT, and even telecom, we stand these companies side-by-side to examine their financial performances, strategies, investments and approaches to the digital transformation market.

Once again, we have multiple TBR analysts traveling this week, so expect special reports on PwC and Accenture as early as next week.