China Overtakes the USA as the Largest Market for IT Products and Services
The annual report from TBK Consult showing the relative demand for information technology in each of the 229 countries in the world confirms that China now has overtaken the US as the largest market for IT products and services.
The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the agenda for most businesses in all countries and it is uncertain what the world will look like on the other side.
The 2020 edition of the whitepaper from TBK Consult is based on the CIA national accounting estimates for 2019 and does not reflect the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus will no doubt claim a substantial portion of the expected economic growth in most countries, but it may not impact the overall distribution of industrial demand. We will not know for sure until we see the numbers in 2021.
“Anything associated with remote work and virtual collaboration and meetings will experience a surge in demand,” says Hans Peter Bech, the author of the whitepaper. “People will learn the benefits of skipping commuting and travel and of working from home. They will get familiar with the tools required to do so. Business owners and executives will appreciate the benefits of the reduced need for real estate and they will discover that most of their staff can actually manage themselves. Closing schools and other educational institutions will enforce the implementation of e-learning solutions. On the other side of the pandemic we will have a population of teachers and students that all have practical experience with these tools. I will be surprised if that does not have a positive impact on the demand for e-learning platforms.”
To help information technology executives make expansion decisions TBK Consult calculates and publishes the BECH Index annually.
The BECH Index for a country reflects the demand capacity of the country and thus also reflects the share of global demand for information technology-related products and services.
World demand continues moving east
The Americas have experienced a 15 per cent decline in the period 2014-2020.
The demand from Central and South America drops again in 2020 and the decline in demand from North America results in a net loss of 1.52 per cent for the area.
The European Union has lost 11 per cent of global demand in the same period and after a slight increase in 2018, the decline continues in 2020. Russia, the sixth biggest market, has lost 13.79 per cent since 2014. The loss in 2020 is 2.18 per cent.
North America and Europe continue to be very interesting areas with some of the biggest markets in the world and because of increasing labour costs and public expenditure there is a growing need for information analytics, and process and cost optimization solutions.
The Middle East’s share of global demand has decreased continuously since 2017 and the region has lost 3.65 per cent in four years. Future growth in the Middle East still requires a restructuring away from the dependency on oil and gas and general liberalization of the economy. I remain sceptical that they will be successful with such a transformation and predict a continued decrease in the region.
China continued its growth and has, with a 7.69 per cent growth from 2019 to 2020, become the largest information technology market in the world pushing the USA to second place.
For 2020 the Asia Pacific region’s share of global demand increased 2.33 per cent. The most prominent growth area is India showing a 34 per cent increase in the period 2014-2019. However, from 2019 to 2020 India’s share of world demand declined 1.57 per cent.
For additional information please contact:
Hans Peter Bech
