"China still needs some time to consume over-purchases in the two years following the Internet bubble and the challenges from its entry into the World Trade Organization," said Wilson Wan, deputy general manager of IDC China, during the US-based firm's annual event to release its forecasts on April 15.

At the IDC Directions 2002: IT Leadership for the Rebound, the company predicts the IT market in China will grow by 18.2 percent this year with a volume of US$22 billion, slightly lower than last year's 18.7 percent, which is still expected to be the highest IT growth in the Asia Pacific region.

The domestic IT market is expected to resume its high-rate growth of around 25 percent for the coming four years.

"Besides the favourable factors like China's WTO entry and Beijing's hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games, the government's determination to promote e-government will also be a major driving force of the growth," said Wan.

IDC China estimated the governments in China will invest 3.4 billion yuan (US$411 million) this year to apply IT technologies in governmental departments, with further spending bringing the investment to 5 billion yuan (US$600 million).

With the attention from international and domestic investors, East China, with Shanghai as its centre, will become the biggest IT market in a few years, Wan said.

"I believe the process will be much faster than people expect," he added.

He further predicted that the IT market in the South China region around Guangzhou will surpass that in North China with Beijing as its center.

The leading IT research firm also claimed that China's software and IT services sectors will double their share of the total IT market in the coming four years -- from 16 percent to 30 percent in 2006.

At the same time, shipments of personal computers (PCs) will exceed those from Japan in 2004, reaching almost 16 million units and representing the second largest market in the world.

Last year's shipments totalled 8.8 million units, a growth rate of 22 percent.

"The strong demand from the education sector has been a major reason for the growth, and I believe it will continue in the coming several years," said Shen Lin, computing research manager with IDC China.

Mark Hall, director of Life Science Research with IDC Corporate, expressed optimism about the convergence of bio-science and the IT industry down the road.

He predicted that the bio-scientific IT market worldwide will increase from US$12 billion in 2001 to US$38 billion in 2006, with an average annual growth rate of 24 percent.

"This has brought an extraordinary rapid pace of challenges to IT vendors, and the next two to three years will be critical for them," said Hall. He anticipates that more and more IT makers will enter the market through alliances with bio-medical firms or research organizations.

With the high risks, high rewards and long timespan required for research and development in bio-medicine, IT applications have become "radically" important to the medical industry, according to Hall.

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2002)