China's healthy growth in IT spending will stimulate adoption of technologies including desktop and server virtualization, software as a service (SaaS) and media tablets, said Gartner Tuesday when releasing its 2012 Hype Cycle for ICT in China report.
The 2012 Gartner Hype Cycle for ICT in China evaluates the information and communication technology products and services that analysts believe will have a strong impact on Chinese enterprises as they look to increase their technology adoption to support international and domestic growth and competitive differentiation, said Gartner in a statement.
According to research firm, IT spending by Chinese end users including both organizations and consumers grew by nearly 14 per cent in 2011, versus a little over 5 per cent in the US in the same period.
Gartner expects spending by IT end users in China to grow 12.6% from US$277 billion in 2011 to US$312 billion in 2012.
"Despite the worsening impact of the global economic downturn affecting both local and multinational companies in China in the first half of 2012, the Chinese government's 12th Five Year Plan that began in 2011 will continue to influence the IT initiatives of Chinese enterprises through 2015," said Jim Longwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The consumerization of IT will also continue to have a strong impact in China, which has the world's largest number of Internet users and mobile handsets, the largest PC market, and the second largest hardware market."
High growth in IT spending will prompt many Chinese companies to adopt technologies included in the 2012 hype cycle, which will lead to significantly increased market acceptance of many of them during 2014 and 2015, he added.
"This hype cycle is typical of emerging economies. Historically Chinese enterprises have seen more tangible value in acquiring IT hardware than software packages and services," said Longwood. "In the past five years, however, software investments have been catching up as local application vendors have found a place in most enterprises and end users have started to see more tangible benefits of using software packages."
He added that enterprises have also started hiring external service providers to undertake application development and package implementation, and are now considering outsourced and "as a service" delivery models.
The Hype Cycle report also illustrates the relative benefits and likely adoption times of relevant technologies and services in China, said Gartner that identifies two technologies as being of transformational benefit in China.
These technologies are machine-to-machine communication services -- which are seen as transformational for telecom-related and "smart"-related technologies -- and smart city frameworks -- which will enable Chinese cities and China-based enterprises to optimize energy use for sustainability. Gartner estimated that both these technologies will take five to ten years to reach maturity.
