Software market on the rise as hardware decreases 2.3 per cent
Thailand's computer hardware market has dropped by 2.3 per cent, though the software and service side of things is still growing.
The Information and Communication Technology Ministry has indicated that cloud computing and big data are the key drivers of Thailand’s computer service market, which has been forecast to grow by 12.4 per cent to hit Bt51.9 billion.
In the computer service market, data centre management services have reported the highest growth, with infrastructure as a service (IaaS) showing a 33-per-cent increase, co-location service showing a 19.7-per-cent rise and disaster recovery centres showing a 18.2-per-cent growth.
Meanwhile, the Software Industry Promotion Agency (Sipa) said last week that the packaged software and software service markets were forecast to grow by 11.1 per cent together, while separately, packaged software should rise 6.3 per cent and software service market by 13 per cent. The key driving forces for the software market are mobiles, e-commerce and cloud computing as well as Internet of Things and wearable devices.
In this era of smartphones, Thai software firms should set their sights on mobiles as the key to business. Potential growth areas are digital presence, sales analytics, customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP).
The government’s digital economy policy is also the key factor for the growth of software and computer service.
However, Thailand’s computer hardware market has been suffering, dropping from Bt77.6 billion last year to Bt75.8 billion so far this year. The slump in the market is blamed on the economic slowdown and housing debt, which is stopping consumers from spending on IT. The private sector and government offices remain the key spenders.
Thailand’s personal computer market this year is expected to drop 5.2 per cent from Bt53.2 billion in 2014 to Bt50.5 billion. The notebook market is suffering the most significant drop of 12.7 per cent to Bt18.7 billion, followed by desktop computers, which dropped 5.7 per cent to Bt13 billion. The tablet PC market, however, is expected to grow 4.2 per cent to Bt18.7 billion.
The other hardware markets that are falling are the monitor, printer and scanner markets. The scanner market is suffering the most, dropping 37.1 per cent from Bt140 million to around Bt88 million. The monitor market is expected to drop 1.5 per cent to around Bt2.2 billion, while the printer market is expected to drop 1.7 per cent to around Bt3.8 billion.
However, the external hard disk market this year has been forecast to rise 6.1 per cent to around Bt3.5 billion, while the projector market should also grow 2.8 per cent to around Bt1.3 billion.
