IT spending to rise 10.6% in 2015, IDC predicts
International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts that spending on information technology in Thailand will rebound, growing by 10.6 per cent to US$13.4 billion (Bt439 billion), driven by four markets: smartphones, IT services, package software, and storage.
The top three spenders will be telecommunications firms, banks, and manufacturerers, said IDC Thailand’s country manager Michael Araneta.
The smartphone market is expected to grow 17 per cent to 19.2 million units, up from 16.5 million this year, while the personal-computer market (notebooks and desktops) is expected to grow 7 per cent to 2.66 million units, from 2.48 million in 2014.
The total mobile-phone market is expected to be around 30 million units per year, of which the smartphone portion is continuing to increase, cannibalising the market for normal mobiles. By next year, smartphone penetration of the total population is expected to hit 50 per cent, compared with 37.7 per cent this year.
The PC market will rebound because of a decline in the tablet market and the change in government’s policy from buying tablets for students to buying notebooks instead.
The tablet market is expected to decline by 23 per cent to around 2.65 million units, from 3.54 million units in 2014.
From 2015 onwards, the tablet market is to undergo organic growth of around 5 per cent year since the abandonment of the government’s one-tablet-per-student initiative. The tablet market is also being cannibalised by smartphones and phablet devices.
Araneta said the country was entering the "third platform era".
"The second platform era was about client-server computing, while the first platform era was about the mainframe," he said.
The four components of the third platform era are mobility, the cloud, big data and analytics, and social business, he said.
Mobility is the key area. Apart from the healthy growth of the smartphone market, it is also predicted that in 2015, the mobile data market will increase 29.6 per cent, even if the auctioning of fourth-generation cellular licences is delayed again.
"Half of the top 100 companies in Thailand will embrace ‘mobile-first’ strategies. Thus in 2015, data service will drive telecom spending growth to 14 per cent compared [with] this year," Araneta said.
