International Data Corp (IDC), a US-based research firm, forecast last week that the information-technology market in the Asia-Pacific region would grow at 11 percent this year.
The report expects significant gains in wireless local access networks (LANs), digital cameras, online video games, combined mobile phone and personal organizer devices, networked attached storage (NAS), telephone calls over the Internet and Linux software.
IDC releases its top-10 predictions for the regional information and communications-technology markets every January.
"IDC expects a cautious gradual IT-market recovery to take place in the Asia-Pacific region [excluding Japan] in 2003, driven by infrastructure upgrades" said Piyush Singh, managing director of IDC Asia-Pacific. "The market is expected to grow by 11 percent over the prior year and will be worth US$81 billion in 2003."
Telecommunications should also see 11 percent growth.
"The telecommunications services industry in the region will continue its growth momentum driven by deregulation and pent-up demand in the developing countries. This market will grow by 11 percent over the prior year to US$137 billion," Singh said. "Broadband will continue to proliferate, driven by lower prices, competition and the exploding on-line gaming phenomenon in the region."
Use of wireless technology used to link computers is expected to grow. Corporate demand for wireless LANs and the emergence of "hotspots" where laptop users can access the Internet wirelessly in public areas such as airports and coffee shops are expected to drive growth in the coming year.
India's service companies, such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys Technologies Ltd, Wipro Infotech Ltd and Satyam Computer Services Ltd, are likely to emerge as key global players, Singh said.
The network storage market will pass the US$1 billion mark in the Asia-Pacific region, and open-standard Linux software "will gain acceptance in enterprises and will eat into the space dominated by Unix," the report said.
Other predictions are that the growth of online gaming will drive the growth of broadband in the region, and shipments of devices that combine a mobile phone handset and personal organizer should grow by as much as 88 percent compared to last year.
A further milestone will be passed in the area of photography. "By the end of the year, digital images captured per day by scanners, cameras, and devices will surpass the number of images captured on film, but the industry will still center on film," the report said.
IDC also predicts that companies will become more concerned about security this year if the threat of virus and cyber-terrorist attacks begin to rise.
Other research firms have given an equally rosy outlook for the Asia-Pacific IT market this year. Dataquest Inc, a unit of Gartner Inc, predicted last month that in the "most likely case" the global PC market would grow at 7 percent this year compared with last year. The Asia-Pacific region would outstrip this figure, with around 10 percent growth.
Taiwan's technology sector will see slower-than-regional growth in hardware sales, but will grab a larger share of the growth in software and telecommunications, according to one government-funded research unit.
The Market Intelligence Center predicts that the nation's hardware industry will grow by 8.8 percent this year to reach US$53.5 billion. At the same time the software and telecommunications industries are expected to increase 18 and 31.1 percent, to reach US$5.2 billion and US$5.5 billion, respectively, the center said.
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