Small and medium businesses (SMBs, or companies with up to 999 employees) in Pakistan invested more than US $1.5 billion on ICT (information and communications technology) in 2007, according to market studies by AMI-Partners. 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.

“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.”

“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.”

About these 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.

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