Gray Market Products: Stealing Legitimate IT Sales?

The VAR Guy is often skeptical of market studies that make bold statements about all the money technology companies lose to the high-tech underground. But our resident blogger loves statistics. And the latest stats about gray market high-tech products should be alarming to VARs.

According to The Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement (AGMA) and KPMG, the value of gray market products in 2007 averaged $58 billion, placing the gray market between 5% and 30% of total IT sales.

Hold on. That’s a pretty big range. Is it 5% — or is it 30%?

In the defense of AGMA and KPMG, even a 5% problem is a big problem. A spokesman for AGMA and KPMG says:

Big-time IT companies like Cisco Systems Inc. are talking up the threat of gray market hardware. And Hewlett-Packard is battling the gray market threats as well. Consider yourself warned. Don’t go over to the dark side.