IDC's Europe, Middle East and Africa Quarterly Enterprise Client Device Tracker® monitors the shipment totals of thin clients and terminal clients. This service delivers a quarterly database detailing the historical performance of the market's individual players by technology, form factor, sales channel, and operating system, and most importantly a 5–12 quarter forecast plus an additional two years of annual projections by technology, form factor, and operating system for each country included in the service, all of which is provided through best-in-class online delivery tools. This service is designed to help vendors wishing to accelerate the growth of their enterprise client devices business in the EMEA region and assist them in their business plan and market positioning strategy. Thin clients are diskless devices that exist only on a network, using a server to download applications and store data. Most traditional thin clients run a local embedded operating system. A growing number of new devices are shipping with no local OS, and we categorize this type of device, often referred to as a "zero client," as a thin client without OS. Thin client devices are often used as part of a client virtualization deployment in companies and institutions of all sizes. Terminal clients are devices without a CPU or operating system that have a direct cable connection to a PC running a multiuser operating system (such as Microsoft Multipoint Server 2010).

Technology Coverage and Data Segmentation

This service provides total market size and vendor share for the following technology areas and segments. Measurement for this tracker is in unit shipments and factory revenues.

Technologies and subtechnologies:

• Enterprise thin clients
• Terminal client devices

Segmentation:

• Unit shipments by form factor (standalone, LCD or CRT monitor equipped, and mobile)
• Unit shipments by sales channel (direct and two-tier distribution)
• Unit shipments by operating system (Windows CE, Windows Embedded Standard 2009, Windows Embedded Standard 7, Windows XP Embedded, Linux, without OS, and other)

Geographic Scope

• Central and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Rest of CEE, Russia)
• Middle East and Africa (Pakistan, Rest of Middle East and Africa, South Africa, Turkey)
• Western Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom)

Forecast Coverage

Forecasts for this tracker are updated quarterly and include three years of historical data and two years of quarterly forecasts, plus an additional three years of market projections. Forecasts are available at the worldwide, regional, and country levels. The segments being forecast in this tracker include:

• Thin client forecast by form factor
• Thin client forecast by operating system
• Terminal client forecast

Delivery Schedule and Deliverables

This service is delivered on a quarterly basis with a pivot-table–based deliverable for historical and forecast data. The delivery schedule for this tracker is as follows:

• Historical data: week 8 after period closes
• Forecast data: week 10 after period closes