No slowdown expected in Thailand's IT growth

International Data (Thailand) researcher Aishwarya Kapoor said security regulations and greater adoption of ERP among large and medium-sized organisations were creating a much greater demand for software.

Thailand's software market is expected to be worth about Bt14.66 billion this year, up from Bt13.29 billion last year and representing about 27 per cent of the Kingdom's total spending on information technology (IT).

In its 2008 Thailand ICT Market Outlook Report, parent International Data Corp (IDC) said software directions this year would be driven by five main factors: compliance pressure in the banking and financial sectors, small and medium-sized market opportunities, service-oriented architecture, radio-frequency identification and competition among local independent software vendors.

The manufacturing sector was the main user of software last year, with 25 per cent of total software spending. The banking and financial sector followed at 17 per cent, then communications and media at 13 per cent, government at 11 per cent and retail and wholesale at 8 per cent.

Thailand's IT services are expected to grow 13 per cent this year to a value of about Bt30.81 billion and 15 per cent next year to Bt35.49 billion, IDC said.

IT services comprise consulting and systems integration, IT outsourcing and after-sales service of hardware products. IT outsourcing experiences the highest growth and is expected to expand at the expense of after-sales service of hardware products.

IDC said Thailand's total IT spending was expected to grow 9 per cent this year to US$4.363 billion (Bt144 billion). Of that, 73 per cent will be spent on hardware, 27 per cent on software.

The hardware market is expected to grow 12 per cent to reach 1.9 million units. These will include 981,790 desktop computers (up 15 per cent) and 901,958 notebook computers (up 10 per cent).

Meanwhile, market demand for printers is expected to reach about 1.3 million units and, for the first time, sales of ink-jet multifunctional printers are expected to surpass ink-jet single-function units. The market is expected to demand 522,560 ink-jet single-function printers, 584,062 ink-jet multifunctional printers and 201,982 laser printers.

IDC said Thailand's telecommunications-services market would reach a value of $7.76 billion this year, including Bt71.59 billion for fixed-line services and Bt173.65 billion for mobile-phone services.

Seventy-eight per cent of the value of fixed-line services will come from telecom-network services and the rest from Internet-access services. Telecom-network services will consist of 78.7-per-cent voice and 21.3-per-cent data.

Of the Internet-access services, 53.4 per cent will be broadband connections with a speed of more than 256 kilobits per second.

The number of broadband-Internet users is expected to rise to 1.75 million this year, from 1.2 million now, IDC said.

The total market for mobile-phone services is expected to reach Bt173.65 billion.

Of that, voice services will amount to Bt156.51 billion and non-voice services, Bt17.14 million.

Mobile-phone music will be a key factor contributing revenue to mobile services, with an estimated value of Bt4.4 billion this year, up from Bt3.9 billion.

There are three types of mobile-phone music: ring-back tones, ring tones and full music tracks.

The number of mobile users  is expected to reach 57.5 million this year: 51 million prepaid and 6.5 million post-paid users.

Asina Pornwasin

The Nation