Mobile device shipments have overtaken traditional PCs within India SMBs, says AMI

Cloud computing and mobility are the two major pillars on which India SMBs’ ICT adoption rests. Their combined wallet share is likely to rise from just above 30% in 2013 to almost 45% within the next five years. Specifically within the mobile devices segment, SMB tablet shipments are likely to show as high as a 50%+ growth next year. These findings have emerged from the 2014 India SMB ICT and Cloud Services Tracker Overview study by New York-based AMI-Partners.
 
Dev Chakravarty, Research Manager, AMI India, stated, “Mobility-related investments have emerged as key fast-growing areas in terms of ICT deployment and investments, driven by the spiralling rise in tablet and smartphone shipments as well as a significant increase in data plan spending by Indian SMBs. The combined tablet and smartphone shipments to SMBs have already outpaced traditional PC shipments (the latter now makes up only 45% of the hardware shipment pie). In the next five years, the share of tablets and smartphones is anticipated to escalate to 70%, as the contribution of PCs gradually drops further.
  
He added, “More and more SMBs prefer hosted servers and co-location since this yields multiple benefits – that is, lower costs, fewer management hassles, no need to maintain a data center, all-the-time third-party support, assured security measures, etc. For the major ICT spending categories among SMBs, security is a key technology that displays the highest future growth – more than 20% year on year. Within the last twelve months, over 70% of Indian SMBs experienced some kind of security breach. Hence, SMBs are now even more wary of security-related threats,” remarked Chakravarty.
 
Security remains a high-priority, high-growth area within the India SMB spending portfolio.