Global Thin Client Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

Global Thin Client Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The Global Thin Client Market is expected to register a CAGR of 1.9% during the forecast period. The thin client market is anticipated to observe increased growth during the forecast period, primarily owing to the advantages, such as cost reduction and lesser energy consumption, centralized and easy manageability, and the enhanced infrastructure security these devices offer.

Key Highlights

• Various industries are seeking low-cost devices that can significantly decrease desk space and offer an easy replacement/upgrade for conventional systems. The thin client systems qualify for these requirements. They are also capable of reducing energy consumption over a period, which is the primary reason for the increasing demand for these devices in various industries. The healthcare industry is also witnessing an extensive adoption of these devices as a computing solution, owing to their security benefits. In contrast, the IT and telecom industry is installing these devices primarily to facilitate the development of a virtual network. Implementing thin client devices in enterprises or any other area can provide better security-related advantages, as they limit the user from any intrusion in a local machine setting. This application renders the system more secure and protected.
• Various educational institutions, such as colleges, research institutes, and labs, are increasingly adopting thin client solutions to control the monitors centrally at the IT control department, thereby reducing energy consumption. To an extent, these devices also decrease the cost of system upgrades and the time consumed in setting up the PC or laptop at each login. To that extent, in December 2021, Clientron introduced its latest thin client, G600, which is designed to provide an e-Learning environment and improve the quality of teaching and learning to enable a continuous learning process for students. The client features an AMD CPU and high-speed DDR4 RAM (up to 32GB), allowing for the execution of intensive tasks, including running four 4K displays simultaneously and handling power-hungry applications effectively.
• The growing adoption of cloud computing is also driving market growth. Several organizations are using cloud computing to reduce costs and access the data and applications that are not installed on the computers or servers. Clouds emerged as an infrastructure that may enable the rapid delivery of computing resources as a utility in a dynamically scalable and virtual manner. Various organizations across the world are moving to a hybrid and multi-cloud environment. A thin client contributes to a comparatively less expensive and secure hardware solution, which is driving market growth. Also, with the rising adoption of workspace-as-a-service (WaaS) in several enterprises, the market is anticipated to witness augmented demand during the forecast period. WaaS is a kind of desktop virtualization that is used by multiple organizations to provide their employees access to applications remotely. However, network issues in developing countries for cloud computing are expected to restrain the growth of the studied market.
• Energy companies operating in a geopolitically sensitive industry face frequent cyberattack targets, especially from foreign governments. However, using the cloud as a base for desktop virtualization allows sensitive information to be stored centrally, and authentication policies can be set to secure the cloud environment. This factor is anticipated to generate demand for the thin client market.
• The trend toward remote work has been steadily growing for the past decades. However, the effect of COVID-19 dramatically accelerated this trend in an extremely short period of time, forcing companies, irrespective of their size, to adapt quickly to the self-isolation measures that were being recommended by governments across the world. With the pandemic requiring more people to be working remotely, the concern regarding the security of data sharing among employees increased. This has been driving the adoption of the demand for thin-client devices.

Key Market TrendsThe Healthcare Segment is Expected to Drive the Market's Growth

• Healthcare providers are stringent in offering the highest standards of patient care. They are acutely attuned to the technologies they use to improve the patient experience at every stage of care. From admissions to the emergency room to rehabilitation and outpatient care, the technology being utilized can make a significant difference in patient outcomes and have a critical impact on providers’ productivity and operational costs. This holds especially true for the desktop computing infrastructure that is ubiquitous across the healthcare domain. The legacy desktop PC model, data, and applications reside locally on individual PCs distributed across the network, often yielding a cluster of individually configured and managed PCs. Each of these is associated with sensitive patient data, often with little to no parameter uniformity.
• However, with thin clients, data and applications are remotely administered, stored, and centralized in the data center or cloud infrastructure. The thin client is simply the access portal, giving administrators and clinicians immediate access to their applications and patient data, as their credentials allow.
• By the nature of their architecture, thin clients offer a host of security advantages to help ensure compliance with HIPAA and other healthcare regulations while also minimizing exposure to security threats. Authorized user access to cloud-based data and applications is strictly controlled via user authentication and permissions verification. USB/port protections, smart cards, and firewalls can further augment these security measures.
• Although the industry is currently transitioning into digitization, it has been notoriously recognized to be resistant to changes since any failure of unreliable technology translates into issues that affect patient health. Any deviation from predetermined workflows can have adverse effects on the operations of a hospital. Despite the hesitancy, the industry is forced to accelerate technology adoption to remain compliant with the constantly changing regulations and compliance agreements.
• Such needs have encouraged robust partnership structures designed around maximizing offering capabilities. For instance, HP actively engages with Citrix on preproduction work such that any updates and products developed by Citrix are integrated with HP products as and when they are introduced, ensuring minimal disruption of user and administrator experiences.
• On a more developmental front, in August 2021, supporting its mission to aid healthcare providers in streamlining operations and delivering efficient patient care, LG Business Solutions USA introduced a new LG thin client system designed for use in hospitals and urgent care facilities, and other healthcare environments. The new LG healthcare All-in-One Thin Client workstation (model 24CN670N) features built-in dual-band RFID readers, making it easy for multiple authorized healthcare professionals to log into shared resources, like electronic health records systems and other networked applications.

North America is Expected to Hold a Major Market Share

• North America is expected to dominate the market, primarily due to the factors such as the increasing adoption of cloud technology and highly technology-oriented products, which require activity and flexibility. IT support is available to the majority of companies in the region. The presence of market leaders, a significant number of cloud service providers, and an increasing number of hosted servers in the region are the major contributors to the market's growth in the region. According to the estimates by Cisco Systems, the cloud traffic in North America amounted to 4,860 exabytes per year in 2019 and 6,844 exabytes per year in 2021.
• The organizations in the region are early adopters of the new technologies, which is the major driving force behind the region's dominance. The presence of large cloud service providers plays a significant role in the growth of cloud-based thin client deployment in the region.
• Cloud computing and virtualization are becoming increasingly important in broadcasting. The physical hardware available on site can be optimally supplemented by virtual machines and computers, remotely accessed via network protocols.
• Moreover, the North American IT and telecommunications industry is one of the largest among other regional markets. Also, industries, such as banking, healthcare, and government organizations, which handle a large amount of sensitive information, are looking forward to adopting thin client solutions. They can preserve the integrity of the intellectual property better than a fat client.
• Hardware development has also been considerably worked on, with regular competitive releases by vendors. In June 2021, OnLogic announced the addition of the TM800 to their line of thin clients that feature the ThinManager software. The TM800 is an industrial AMD Ryzen-powered thin client capable of driving four independent displays to serve the increasing visualization demands of a smart factory. It is further capable of updating, monitoring, and maintaining each thin client from the server, encouraging overall maintenance and allowing remote updates of each user terminal to maximize security capabilities. The product is expected to register an initial release in the states before working towards overseas markets.

Competitive Landscape

The Global Thin Client Market is highly competitive owing to the presence of many large players in the market providing products in the domestic as well as the international markets. The market appears to be mildly concentrated, with the key players in the market adopting strategies like product and service innovation, partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions to extend their geographic reach and stay ahead of the competitors. Some of the major players in the market are Dell Inc., H.P. Development Company, L.P., Samsung Group, and L.G. Electronics Inc., among others.

• November 2021 - IGEL, a provider of edge O.S. for cloud workspaces, announced a definitive global agreement with H.P. Inc. for the certification of IGEL OS on select H.P. thin clients to deliver secure, cost-effective, and easy-to-manage cloud-enabled workspaces for the new work-from-anywhere (WFx) a. H.P. certifying the IGEL OS on their t430, t540, and t640 platforms would increase access to customers seeking a secure, high-performance option for their EUC environment.
• June 2021 - Axcient, a prominent player in business availability software for Managed Service Providers, announced the release of x360Sync Thin Client for Wind. The new release facilitates users to leverage the economics of the cloud to reduce local storage costs and get instant access to files even from mobile devices es. With no requirement to store data locally, x360Sync provides an additional layer of security and enables instant recovery from disasters like ransomware or human error.

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• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
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