Small and medium-sized businesses in the Asia-Pacific region are predicted to spend 95.8 billion dollars on information technology upgrades in 2008 with China, India, South Korea and Australia leading the pack, a study said on Monday.The amount is 14 per cent higher than last year, said US-based Access Market International (AMI) Partners Inc.
Which defines small and medium-sized businesses as commercial enterprises with a maximum of 1,000 employees. The combined spending of China, India, South Korea and Australia is forecast to account for more than 70 per cent of total IT spending in the region.
"Investments in emerging markets like China will continue to surge on the back of the run-up to the Beijing Olympics," The Business Times quoted Nishant Dave, Singapore-based research director. India will be the fastest growing major market with IT spending set to increase more than 20 per cent in 2008 to 9.6 billion dollars, Dave said.
Banking, financial services and manufacturing were cited as driving the growth in the businesses' spending in India. Overall, 2008 is expected to be a strong growth year for the IT investments of businesses in the region, offering new opportunities for IT vendors, suppliers and service providers, Dave told the newspaper.
Nearly 36 per cent of IT spending by medium-sized businesses will be on computing hardware which includes personal computers, servers, printers and other related hardware, AMI said. Another 30 per cent will be spent on IT services.