Every Wednesday our CONTEXT team of analysts share their expertise on the latest IT industry trends for channel businesses across Europe and further afield. These CONTEXT IT Industry Forum webinars are your number one resource for the latest market intelligence.

Among our highlights for September 2025 are continued strong performance for Spain and the Nordics, a slight August slowdown across Europe and sluggish sales in the unified communications space. Here’s more:

Software, PCs and components drive Nordics growth

The Nordics region remains one of the strongest in Europe. Revenue sales through distribution slowed a little in Week 30, dipping under the Revenue Trend Index baseline, but this can be largely attributed to the summer holiday period. True to form, it’s picking back up again as of Week 34, and outperforming Europe as a whole in the process. We’re seeing growth across all four Nordics countries, with mobile computing and desktops, components, and software and licenses leading the charge. Telecoms, displays and networking are not doing quite as well. But after annual revenue growth of 14% (Q1) and 17% (Q2), Q3 is already looking strong at 15% growth in the quarter to date. Software (25%) and personal systems (12%) are steaming well ahead of our forecasts for Q3 so far.

August slowdown follows strong July

The major European markets of Germany and the UK dragged down revenue sales growth through distribution to just 1.5% year-on-year (YoY) in August. Their figures for the month stood at -2.8% and -5.9% YoY respectively, with Italy (-4.8%) also underperforming the region as a whole. Balancing that out were excellent performance from Spain (24.9%) and the Nordics (14.2%), as well as France (9.7%) and Poland (2.8%). Where did the slowdown come from? Infrastructure (-3% YoY), software and services (-4% YoY) and telecoms (-10%) were the main culprits. Conversely, personal systems (17% YoY) did tremendously well in August. This all came after a strong July, so we’re hopeful that a rebound in September will bring us back near our forecast of 5.3% YoY revenue growth in Q3.

Spain and Poland lead the way for unified communications

Overall, the unified communications (UC) market has been pretty sluggish over recent weeks, although that could be the impact of the summer holiday period in Europe. But that’s not the case in Spain, which leads all other European countries by quite some margin. A surge in demand for LFDs helps to explain this tremendous performance. In Poland, which is also growing well, it is headset sales that are driving the numbers. When it comes to segments, accessories, room systems and display systems are the only ones maintaining a similar performance to last year. Display systems can put its continued good performance down almost entirely to sales in Spain.

Spain outperforms Europe in 2025 YTD

Spain continues to ride high in Europe, and will be given a further boost by government announcements to digitise the public sector and to invest more in national security. The latter initiative, announced in April, will boost defence spending to 2% of GDP and could increase investment into high-tech sectors – especially AI, cybersecurity, data and telecoms. Sales through distribution in the country continue to outperform the rest of Europe, with YoY growth hitting 13.5% in H1 2025 and 14.6% in the year to date (YTD). Growth slumped slightly to 8% YoY in September, but only because of a strong September 2024. Investments in PCs have helped the volume market to bounce back to 16% YoY growth YTD, with value at 12% YoY YTD. In terms of channels, small and medium reseller (SMR) sales continue to grow (16% YoY YTD). As more SMBs digitise with government support, there’s plenty more opportunity for growth in this area.

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