htxt.africa‘s Gear of the Year 2017 concluded on Thursday with an awards ceremony held at Tarsus Distribution Headquarters in Buccleuch, Johannesburg. htxt.africa is a South African tech site dedicated to covering the local consumer market with interesting news, product reviews, and features, along with some content relevant to SMEs.
Award winners were determined by a reader survey conducted by the site in the latter part of last year, in which readers were asked to offer their opinions on the best products of that year.
For the first time, SMEs were also included in the survey: the site asked readers who work in the SME space to choose their favoured brands in categories specific to their market, and to rank their biggest challenges in order of importance.
Brett Haggard, htxt’s publisher and editor-in-chief, presided over the event and shared the survey’s findings with the audience made up of representatives of the top-ranked brands featured in the survey.
Anton Herbst, Tarsus Technology Group’s Chief Strategy Officer, contributed some insights from Tarsus’s perspective as well, including the observation that the channel is facing its own share of challenges lately, and key to meeting those is understanding the end user better through research like that done by HTXT.Africa in order to figure out how best to meet their needs with new products and solutions.
The issues SMEs voted for as being the most pressing, and the percentage of votes each attracted from the pool of over 1300 participants, were the following:
- Increased information security – 41,2%
- Digitalisation – 20,6%
- More processing power – 17,6%
- Taking my business mobile – 14,7%
- Cloud Migration – 5,9%
There was also quite a bit of overlap between the sections, with some of the SME winners also cleaning up in the Consumer section.
The winners of the SME section of the survey were as follows:
- Business Tablets: Samsung
- Business Smartphones: Samsung
- Wearables: Samsung
- Business Laptops: Dell
- Business Desktops: Dell
- Business Printers: HP
- Servers: Dell
- Monitors: Dell
- Storage Hardware: Samsung
- Desktop/Creative Software: Microsoft Office
- Accounting Software: Sage
- Cloud Services: AWS
- Uninterruptible Power Supplies: Proline
- Security Software: McAfee
- Business fixed-line ISP: Telkom
- Business Cellular: Vodacom
- Routers: D-Link
- Projectors: Acer
- Preferred Online Store: Takealot
- Preferred Brick & Mortar Retailer: Makro
And here are the winners of the Consumer section, in which readers were asked to vote for their favourite products of the year:
- Tablets: Apple iPad Pro
- High-end Smartphones: Samsung Galaxy Note 8
- Wearables: Apple Watch 3
- Business Laptops: Dell Inspiron 5567
- Budget Laptops: Dell Inspiron 3552
- Printers: HP OfficeJet 7110
- Budget Smartphones: Xiaomi Redmi 4X
- Monitors: Dell S27
- Storage: Samsung’s SSD range
- Games: Call of Duty WW2
- Fixed-line Internet Service Provider: Afrihost
- Gaming Laptops: Alienware 17 by Dell
- Televisions: Samsung Q9F QLED
- Security Software: Kaspersky
- Routers: D-Link
- Cellular Provider: Vodacom
- Preferred Online Store: Takealot
- Preferred Brick & Mortar Retailer: Makro
Congratulations to all the winners! The Gear of the Year survey will happen again this year, with an awards ceremony to follow in 2018 once the vote closes and the data is collated and analysed.
