COVID-19 to hurt India’s domestic Hardware and Software market

COVID19 to impact India's domestic IT spending (Hardware, Software, and Services) is expected to drop to -4.5% as compared to 2019 growth rate of +9.1%, as per the IDC forecast.

IDC 's Worldwide Black Book Live Edition, March 2020, says that the decline in growth rate is likely because enterprises relook at their buying decisions owing to the increased focus on profitability.

However, the demand for productivity applications as a remote workforce will increase.

Apart from collaborative tools and solutions, cloud platforms, security solutions, and automation technologies, most of the other applications will post only marginal growth, according to IDC.

"IT vendors are gearing up to adapt and transform the way of doing business, in a bid to support their clients during these testing times. Although IT spending will be impacted, specific solutions such as conferencing and collaboration, secure endpoint and network management, CRM, cloud storage, backup & recovery solutions, and remote support & services will continue to witness a steady rise amidst the crisis," Shweta Baidya, Senior Research Manager, Enterprise Software and IT Services, IDC India said in a statement.

Overall, India's domestic IT spending (hardware, software, and services) is expected to drop to minus 4.5 percent as compared to the 2019 growth rate of plus 9.1 percent, as per the IDC forecast.

The hardware segment will contribute the most to this decline, while growth in IT services is expected to be almost flat at 6.9 percent as enterprises look at maintaining the status quo on IT services contracts.

On the IT services side, endpoint and network services will witness a stronger demand because of extended remote working options.

Hardware and software implementation or integration services will be slightly impacted because of the non-deployment/non-availability of new hardware or software.

IDC warned that the renewal of long-term IT services contracts will be delayed by a few quarters and organizations will adopt a wait and watch approach for non-critical IT spending.

However, enterprises are also looking at cloud options for business continuity, infrastructure services, and application management, it said.

(IANS Inputs)