Intel Corp. eyes Indonesia's SMEs market

Wahyoe Boediwardhana, The Jakarta Post/Denpasar

Intel Corporation, the world's largest chip maker for personal computers (PC), has eyed Indonesia's small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as part of its efforts in further boosting its global market share.

Speaking during a panel discussion on information technology (IT) solutions for SMEs here recently, Intel Indonesia distribution manager Singgih M. Adwiarto said that the move was made as Indonesia was part of a potentially huge IT market in Asia and the Pacific.

Singgih explained that there are more than 31.3 million SMEs in the region which have still not utilized PCs in their business operations.

Furthermore, a recent survey by the industry's analyst group International Data Center (IDC) showed that PCs make up the largest portion in total spending by SMEs.

"The PC market in the region is expected to reach US$71 billion by the end of the year," Singgih said.

There are more than 75 million SMEs in the world, with an IT spending growth of 13.3 percent per year, or almost three times that of large corporations. The growth figure has even reached 14.4 percent in Southeast Asia.

In Indonesia alone, Singgih said, 73 percent of the country's 1.9 million SMEs did not use PCs for their operations.

"Indonesia is far behind other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines," Singgih said. "Computer penetration in those countries has reached over 57 percent, while it is still 27 percent here."

IT spending growth in Indonesia, however, is 14.2 percent.

In anticipation of such a potential market, Singgih explained that Intel has therefore launched a program to educate its more than 4,000 dealers throughout the country on how to provide IT solutions for SMEs.

The program, in cooperation with the Small Business Technology Institute (SBTI), had initially began in Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Medan, Makassar and Denpasar.

"We will concentrate on how to provide specific hardware and software solutions that are suitable for SMEs," he said.

Intel, however, declined to reveal its target for the program, which was launched last month.

"We're just anticipating that the IT market for SMEs is potentially large and growing, and the fact that everyone will eventually need PCs," he said.

Besides manufacturing Central Processing Unit (CPU)'s, chipsets, and motherboards for PCs, Intel is also one of the world's prominent players in computer networking peripherals.

According to the latest market survey by Mercury Research, Intel controls 81.9 percent of the global CPU market, followed by rival chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) with 15.8 percent.