Interestingly, it is the smaller towns and not the big cities which are expected to open up their markets for the IT vendors. While Coimbatore is set to register an IT-purchase growth of about 45 per cent, Cochin is expected to show 51 per cent growth during the current fiscal, says a recent Map-IT survey of IDC India Ltd. Map-IT is large-scale end-user study on IT potential at the city level, covering the top 23 cities of the country including Bhubhaneshwar and Chandigarh.

Explaining the logic of the growth witnessed in the smaller towns, the survey says that since larger towns have already achieved a considerable level of PC ownership, a high PC penetration will be seen during this fiscal in the hitherto unexplored segments of homes, home offices and small and mediumestablishments of the smaller towns. Home and home offices segment are the fastest growing IT segments in the country, says the survey, with a potential growth of 64 per cent and 56 per cent for 1999-00. The estimated size of the home market is about nine per cent of the total domestic IT market of Rs 15,398 crore. With the projected IT spending for the current fiscal touching Rs 15,398 crore, the home market spending is expected to be about Rs 1,354 crore.

While the SME segment spend is hoped to constitute Rs 33,326 crore, large establishments and government/education/research segments are pegged to spend about Rs 8,963 crore and Rs 1,755 crore for their IT purchases during the fiscal. The enthusiasm among individual users is so high, the IDC survey says, that the home/home office segment in about 15 cities is expected to witness a higher growth rate than the national average of 23 per cent in their IT buys. The PC penetration amongst homes/home offices is the highest in Baroda at 16.4 per cent followedby Pune with 15.8 per cent and Bangalore with 15.3 per cent.