Total IT spending from Taiwanese enterprises this year is set to grow 4.3 percent to US$6.1 billion, with services such as cloud computing to drive the growth, industry tracker International Data Corp (IDC) Taiwan said yesterday.
Spending on hardware such as PCs, servers, storage, handsets and peripherals will account for the bulk at 63 percent, or US$3.8 billion, while spending on IT services such as consulting and coding would hit US$1.5 billion, it said. Software spending was expected to be US$835.6 million.
The 4.3 percent growth rate is not high, IDC Taiwan analyst Alan Tsao (曹永暉) said, adding that despite the number of hardware purchases, it does not help boost overall spending because of plunging average sales prices.
“Thanks to cloud computing, IT services spending is the fastest-growing sector, beating out software and hardware spending,” Tsao told a press briefing.
The latest buzzword in the IT word, cloud computing is an emerging technology that enables users to access data saved in remote servers through telephones or computers.
Tsao said companies base their IT spending on what kind of services they can receive, rather than paying close attention to hardware specifications.
“Specifications don’t really matter as products do not really differ much from one to another now, so services are the key,” he said.
In major key IT trends in Taiwan this year, IDC said touchscreen features will be more prevalent on major tech gadgets. More than 50 percent of smartphones already come with the feature.
“More hardware products will introduce touchscreen features,” Tsao said, adding that more digital cameras and high-end printers will include the feature as the cost of touchscreen components comes down.
IDC also said that light emitting diodes (LEDs) would be more common in slim-screen TVs and computer monitors this year.
However, cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) are still mostly used in LCD TVs because of high price tags.
Global shipments of LED TVs will account for 3.8 percent of total LCD TV shipments this year, up from last year’s 1.6 percent, Tsao said.
Meanwhile, IDC said that despite the fact 3D TVs were popular at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and thanks to the 3D blockbuster Avatar, they would take another three years to go into most households.
There are technology barriers to overcome — such as making the features viewable without the use of special glasses — before most people would be willing to buy a 3D TV set, Tsao said.
The availability of 3D contents, such as more popular movies, would also be a factor in the TVs’ commercial success, he said.
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