According to the analyst company, the "settling" experienced in the past few years has resulted in a growth cycle that is shallower but more prolonged, with the relatively strong Australian economy providing opportunities for suppliers, enterprises and consumers to take advantage of technology.
IDC said the next 12 months would see:
- The number of high-speed mobile data services increase from 340,000 to almost four million in 2003. The vast majority of these are predicted to remain GPRS, which will increase from 308,000 to 3.8 million;
- Worldwide, the number of digital images captured each day from scanners, digital cameras and mobile devices surpassing the number of film images this year;
- The use of the utility model (which delivers services remotely over a network) is predicted to increase for IT services in 2003, with the key areas being storage and security;
- Spending on security by Australian organisations surpassing AU$915 million by the end of 2003. Organisations are starting to move away from a reactive stance on security to planning for a managed solution;
- Web services allowing companies to become more responsive to unchanging market conditions, and the Web service solutions offered by vendors becoming more sophisticated;
- Low prices and solutions tailored to small to medium businesses driving IT adoption in this market segment, pushing spending on IT by Australian SMEs to just over AU$12.5 billion.
- Linux sales in the Australian server market rising from US$32.7 million to US$42.7 million. This equates to an increase in market share from 8.4 to 11.1 percent.
- Business process outsourcing, of such functions as call centres, logistics and HR, starting to move "to a new level" during 2003.
- Increasing broadband subscriptions, digital peripherals and multi-computer households seeing home networking for the small office/home office segment become a AU$40 million business;.
- The rapid introduction of new technology, including the prospect of storage over IP becoming more widely adopted, forcing many organisations to move to network storage.
