APAC SMBs to spend $153 Billion on IT, Telecom

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 30 January 2009, 17:39 IST   |    7 Comments
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Mumbai: The small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the Asia Pacific will play a major role to stabilize the current turbulence in the IT sector. The SMBs spending on the IT and telecom are expected to see a surge by $6.5 billion to touch $153 billion in 2009. The Indian SMBs are expected to chalk up 8.5 percent higher growth than the previous year's spending, making India the fastest growing SMB ICT market in Asia Pacific for 2009. The findings based on a report of Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, stated that the IT and telecom spending by SMBs in China alone will constitute close to 30 percent of the total spending, while Chinese, Korean, and Indian SMBs together make up more than 50 percent of Asia Pacific spending. "Spending growth from bigger SMB markets in China, Korea and India, even if it is slower than last year, will easily compensate by the expected two percent or more reduction in spending from the Australia and New Zealand SMBs," said Vu-Thanh Nguyen, analyst at AMI-Partners. Telecom services and computing, like printers and printing supplies, PCs, and servers, are the two broad categories that will receive significant investment by Asia-Pacific SMBs, about 60 percent of their total IT and telecom spending. Telecom services and computing are integral to businesses and despite the economic downturn, SMBs will still have to spend on basic needs and continue upgrading and replacing old PCs, and buying new systems such as tablet PCs to maintain and increase employee productivity, said Nguyen.