Home segment will drive IT spending: IDC

According to IDC (India) Ltd's 'Map-IT 2000' study, IT spending in 'Home' and 'Small and Medium Sites' would grow at a healthy 55 and 25 percent respectively by the end of 2000-01.

Overall, the domestic IT spending in the country is slated to cross the Rs 21,000 crore mark by the end of 2000-01. High growth in spending in Home and Small and Medium Sites would drive the growth in the overall domestic IT spending.

The Map-IT 2000 is a large-scale study based upon end-user survey of commercial establishments and households across 25 cities in the country. The study aims to map the IT potential of these cities with an effort to capture the segment and component spending details within each.

A clear shift in the share of different segments to total IT spending is observed. While spending in Home segment is estimated to account for 14 percent of total IT spending in 2000-01, an increase of three percentage points over 1999-00, Large Sites is expected to witness a drop in its share of total domestic IT spending. However, minimal change is observed in the shares of Small and Medium Sites and Government, Education and Research.

IT spending in Homes would continue to be hardware centric in 2000-01 and the component of software and services is not likely to grow. With dominance of single-PC households, the annual spending on service component is nearly negligible. The low spending on software can be attributed to the dominance of pirated software in the Home segment. Most of the legal software that goes in Homes is dominated by operating systems, which are mostly pre-installed.

In Small and Medium Sites segment, the share of hardware to total IT spending is expected to drop from 64 percent in 1999-00 to 59 percent in 2000-01 and that of services component is expected to grow from 17 to 22 percent during the said period. The spending on software in Small and Medium Sites is expected to witness a marginal drop in its share in the same period.

The primary objective of IDC's MAP-IT 2000 study was to present a complete and consistent map of 25 cities of the country in terms of IT market and its potential. In addition, the report offers a comprehensive reference resource detailing the views, attitudes, intentions, and IT spending patterns of establishments and consumer segment across these 25 cities. The study also covers in-depth details such as city-wise IT spending breakups by component.