Asian businesses look set to hike IT spending

Small medium-sized businesses in the Asia-Pacific region are predicted to spend US$95.8 billion on information technology upgrades this year with China, India, South Korea and Australia leading the pack, a study said yesterday.

The amount is 14 percent 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 percent 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, a Singapore-based research director, as saying.

India be the fastest growing major market with IT spending set to increase more than 20 percent this year to US$9.6 billion, Dave said.

Banking, financial services and manufacturing were cited as driving the growth in the businesses' spending in India.

Overall, this year 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 percent of IT spending by medium-sized businesses will be on computing hardware which includes personal computers, servers, printers and other related hardware, AMI said.