Gartner, in its recent estimate has observed that IT spending in India is projected to total US $71.3 billion in 2014, a 5.9 percent increase from the US $67.4 billion forecast for 2013.
According to the research firm, IT services will record the strongest revenue growth at 12.1 percent and software revenue will grow 10 percent. It also observed that telecommunication services segment, that accounts for 42.1 percent of the Indian ICT market, is set to grow 2 percent in 2014. The telecommunications services market which includes fixed and mobile, data and voice services will continue to be the largest IT segment in India with IT spending forecast to reach $30 billion in 2014.
The firm also observed that the devices market in India, which includes mobile phones, PCs, tablets and printers is expected to total US $23.5 billion in 2014, a 6 percent increase from 2013.
Gartner believes that the Indian devices market will emerge as the largest segment of IT spend in India by 2017. Growth within this segment will be driven by the sale of mobile phones which will be amongst the fastest growing sub segments within the Indian IT industry. Mobile phone revenue will total $26 billion in 2017 and will account for 76.4 percent of device revenue and 28 percent of overall IT spend in India in the year 2017.
“Mobile smart devices have taken over the technology world. By 2017, new device categories: mobile phones, tablets, and ultra-mobile PCs will represent more than 80 percent of device spending. Gartner also forecasts that by 2017, nearly half of first-time computer purchases will be a tablet. Mobile is the destination platform for all applications,” said Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner and global head of Research.
Another trend that the company observed is that CIOs are significantly interested in changing their IT suppliers in the coming years. In the past, the top technology companies reigned over the industry for long periods of time. However, the current leaders in areas such as cloud and mobile were not on many CIO’s radar five years ago.
“What many traditional IT vendors sold you in the past is often not what you need for the digital future. Their channel strategy, sales force, partner ecosystem is challenged by different competitors, new buying centers, and changed customer business model,” observed Sondergaard.
Partha Iyengar, distinguished analyst and Gartner India head of research observed that mobility is where at of the traditional big vendors are struggling as their legacy software is designed for the desktop metaphor. Therefore they are struggling to deliver volume-based services on the mobile platform.
He also was of the view that there is an increasing interest in using alternate service providers. Companies will be looking at where the innovation is coming from and the new age vendors (many of which have been catering to the consumer market) are better positioned to deliver even in the enterprise market.
Another trend that both Sondergaard and Iyengar talked about is organizations increasingly looking at new leadership roles such as Chief Digital Officer and Chief Data Officer and Gartner believes that by 2014, 19 percent of organizations will look at hiring a Chief Digital Officer while 17 percent will look at hiring a Chief Data Officer.