It is true that the IT market is going through a rough patch. However, the hardware market has not been affected to that extent, as a lot of buying is still going on. As per Gartner’s prediction, this trend will continue till early next year. The sale of PCs and servers will continue to grow this year also. Gartner believes the continued growth will be spurred by companies buying servers for consolidation and virtualization, and also by strong emerging markets. In their statement, Gartner also says that Linux-based systems are making good progress.
Another observation is that the software market has gone down heavily because of the slowdown in the US, whereas the hardware market in the US is still pretty strong. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has already indicated that the inflation outlook is unusual and uncertain. According to him, consumer and business spending is likely to be slow and intensification of inflation is a risky factor for the country. And, growth is projected to pick up gradually over the next two years. Most of the software companies have been advised to intensify their activities in other countries, which hopefully they have already done.
Secondly, it is a common perception that the global software market will regain its lost momentum once the entire political dust in the US settles down, and its chain reaction will influence the other markets also. So, there should not be a panic in the software market. Secondly, the hardware market should not believe in rumours. As a domestic market, India has a huge potential. Just before I closed this issue, I was speaking to a gentleman in Nehru Place and he said: There is a talk in the market that sales have been down by 20 per cent in this quarter, but in my case it is going to be fine because I have been adding some innovative products this month and will continue to do so in the future also.
If one observes the market momentum, the vendors are doing different now to negate the effect. For example, Samsung has identified laser printers as one of the drivers of growth for 2008. Similarly, HP has launched an expensive marketing campaign “Dream Bigger” with Shah Rukh Khan. The message here is for the SMBs to dream big. HCL Technologies has acquired Liberata Financial Services, a leading UK-based BPO Provider, to consolidate its business in finance services.
Sanjay Mahapatra
Editor
