AMI-Partners: SMBs in Pakistan Spent US$1.5 B on ICT in 2007

Thursday March 13 10:00 PM

"SMBs in Pakistan are adopting basic technologies rapidly," says Nilanjana Mitra, Research Analyst at AMI Partners. "Most of Pakistan MBs (medium businesses or companies with 100 to 999 employees) have already attained high usage levels in deploying PCs, printers, basic productivity software tools, antivirus solutions and using the Internet. All of Pakistan's MBs currently use a PC to run their business and almost all of them are connected to the Internet."

Spending on computing and Internet dominates the IT spending pie for SMBs, as they focus on building a strong IT infrastructure. MBs spend a greater proportion on networking compared to SBs, as MBs are eager to enhance connectivity technologies.

"Only 14% of SBs in Pakistan have adopted computers at present," says Ms. Mitra. "Nevertheless, this is more as an opportunity rather than a shortcoming. PC vendors can focus on this relatively untapped SB market opportunity in Pakistan to gain significant returns. PC-adoption plans are quite positive among SBs."

More than one-third of SBs in Pakistan have indicated that they intend to purchase new PCs in the next 12 months. A sizeable proportion of first-time PC buyers are also likely to join in--thus boosting the overall SMB PC market.

"An uncertain economic environment and industry conditions are considered the most important issues hindering SMBs' business growth in Pakistan," says Ms. Mitra. "These factors are pushing SMBs to think of strategies to control costs while adopting newer technologies to keep up with competition."

When looking at the vertical segments of Pakistan based SMBs, the FIRE (financial services, insurance and real estate) and professional services (accounting, advertising, data processing, engineering, legal and photography) are the more technologically advanced. These are followed by the manufacturing vertical segment.

"Together FIRE and professional services constitute 15% of all SMBs in Pakistan," Ms. Mitra says. "About two thirds of these two verticals own PCs, which is quite high compared to a total PC penetration (15%) among all Pakistan-based SMBs. Comparatively, the retail sector represents 55% of all SMBs, but only 8% of the retail sector own PCs."

Related Studies

AMI's 2007 Pakistan Small Business Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment and 2007 Pakistan Medium Business Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment studies highlight these and other major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions. Based on AMI's annual surveys of SMBs in India, the studies track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. This data points to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SMB market requirements.

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com, or visit the AMI Web site at www.ami-partners.com.

About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence -- with a strong focus on global small and medium business (SMB) enterprises and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and "go-to-market" solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies over the last ten years. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets, its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries, and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.

Contact:

Media:
Quoted Analyst:
Nilanjana Mitra, (91) 33 4003 3093 ext 217
nmitra@ami-partners.com
or
Media Relations:
In US (New York):
Nancy Carty, 212-944-5100 ext 581
ncarty@ami-partners.com
or
In EU (London):
Claudia Jachtmann, (44) 208 987 2756
cjachtmann@ami-partners.com
or
In Asia Pacific (Singapore):
Diana Ng, (65) 6220 5535 ext 110
dng@ami-partners.com
or
In India (Kolkata):
Dipendra Mitra, (91) 33 4003 3093 ext 205
dmitra@ami-partners.com

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