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News >> Technology >>
IT spending to grow by 9% in Asia-Pac
By agencies
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Friday, 16 December 2005, 20:30 IST
NEW DELHI: Information technology spending in the Asia-Pacific region is projected to grow at nine percent to over $110 billion in 2006, with China and India accounting for 64 percent of the region's incremental market value.
According to latest IDC report, For 2006, spending on telecommunications services will grow at 8 percent, exceeding $175 billion for Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan). The economic outlook for 2006 is healthy, despite continued global political, health, and environmental uncertainties. This, combined with the relentless pursuit of enterprises and their employees to be more competitive, bodes well for the information and communications technology (ICT) industry in the region.
IDC predicted that ICT spending and growth for the region would be fuelled largely by the surge of the e-empowered employees (EEE). The e-empowered employee is increasingly able to harness technology to be more productive and responsive, said Eva Au, Managing Director, IDC, Asia/Pacific.
Listing out its top predictions that will shape the ICT Asia Pacific industry in 2006, the report said that wireless content packages would keep consumer spending on the boil. The combined wireless content industry, which encompasses games, music, ring tones, video and TV, would be fuelled by the proliferation of content and feature-rich applications that service providers can offer in the entertainment space, together with cost-saving services bundled with broadband access.
Citing the recent announcements of eBay purchasing Skype and Google launching its own Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software, Google Talk, the report said the consumer VoIP market continues to demonstrate healthy growth, with non-traditional operators moving into the space. It also added that increased convergence would lead to overwhelming consumer choice and estimated that 15 million converged devices will be shipped in 2006 across Asia Pacific, reflecting a growth of 24 percent over 2005 shipments.
In 2006, IDC believes that building more open innovation communities will be a big focus for much of the industry. Generating revenue through traditional methods such as sale of the use of individual copies and patent royalty payments become more challenging with open source software, it added.