Global spending on information technology (IT) is expected to reach US$3.8 trillion next year, driven by growth in connected devices ranging from jewelry to refrigerators, researchers said on Monday.
A report by the research firm Gartner said next year’s IT spending is expected to increase 3.6 percent from this year.
The vast expansion of digital devices will affect just about every industry in what is described as the digital industrial economy, according to Gartner researcher Peter Sondergaard. Sondergaard said this means every company will become a technology company in an era of the “Internet of things.”
“Digitalization exposes every part of your business and its operations to these forces,” he said. “It is how you reach customers and constituents, how you run your physical plant and how you generate revenue or deliver services. Enterprises doing this today are setting themselves apart and will collectively lead the new digital industrial economy.”
Gartner said that in 2009, there were 2.5 billion devices with unique IP addresses connected to the Internet; most of them cellphones and computers. In 2020, there will be up to 30 billion devices, most of which will be other products.
Gartner predicts that the total economic value for the Internet of things will be US$1.9 trillion dollars in 2020, benefiting a wide range of industries such as healthcare, retail and transportation.
“Computing power will be cheap and covert. We won’t know it is there. It will be in our jewelry and in our clothing,” Sondergaard said. “We will throw more computers into our laundry in a week than we’ve used in our lifetimes so far.”
Gartner said that by 2017, new device categories such as mobile phones, tablets, and ultra-mobile PCs will represent more than 80 percent of device spending.
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
MARKET SHIFTS: Exports to the US soared more than 120 percent to almost one quarter, while ASEAN has steadily increased to 18.5 percent on rising tech sales The proportion of Taiwan’s exports directed to China, including Hong Kong, declined by more than 12 percentage points last year compared with its peak in 2020, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday last week. The decrease reflects the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains, driven by escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington. Data compiled by the ministry showed China and Hong Kong accounted for 31.7 percent of Taiwan’s total outbound sales last year, a drop of 12.2 percentage points from a high of 43.9 percent in 2020. In addition to increasing trade conflicts between China and the US, the ministry said
RSS