Cloud computing is the engine of growth, turnover rises but the south struggles
Italians are increasingly technological and this despite the digital divide between north and south and between businesses and public administration. After years of recession, the Italian digital market, which includes IT, telecommunications and digital content, has restarted. Growth is subdued but interrupts a negative trend that had lasted for years.
In 2015, IT, telecommunications and digital content grew by 1% to €64,908 million. But there’s more. According to the report by the trade association Assinform and NetConsulting , the figure is accompanied by an estimate for 2016 of 65,882 million euros (+1.5%), which cancels out the decline of the previous two years.
Suffice it to say that ICT services grew to €10,368 million (+1.5%), ICT software and solutions to €5,971 million (+4.7%), devices and systems to €16,987 million (+0.6%), digital content and digital advertising to €8,973 million (+8.6%). The most innovative sectors are driving growth: data centers, cloud computing (+28.7% with revenues of 1.2 billion euros) and Internet of Things (+13.8% and 1.8 billion in turnover).
Smartphones led the sector with a growth of 9.9% to 15.5 million units, positively impacting the growth of broadband users with a growth of 8.8% to 34.5 million. The more general interest in more features is also confirmed by the slow but steady progression of broadband accesses from fixed networks, which rose by 2.1% to 14.6 million.
ICT services, second only to network services in terms of weight on the overall digital market, grew by 1.5% to €10,368 million, after a negative trend that had lasted for years, driven by data center services and especially cloud computing (+28.7% to €1,228 million).
The Assinform report is based on the processing of Istat data and points out two issues of absolute importance. The first: the southern regions also appear to be lagging far behind on the digital front , with per capita expenses per business and consumer often no more than a third of the national average. Secondly, almost 90% of companies with 10 to 49 employees still have very low digitalisation rates. Here are the challenges that the country will have to face in order to turn problems and delays into opportunities and growth.
