Computer Hardware and Software
General Statistics
Clearly Malaysia is still in the development age of the information era. Compared to Singapore the major IT player in the region Malaysia still ranks in the middle of the top 49 developed countries. The Government of Malaysia is trying to improve the IT climate with education and incentives for IT investment but the population of Malaysia still needs to improve its computer skills.
Global IT Rank of Malaysia/Singapore out of 49 Countries
Comparisons Malaysia Singapore Telecomm. -Infrastructure 19 6 Technology Infrastructure 19 2 Science Training in Schools 9 1 Computer Literacy 28 2 Information Technology 13 3
The extent of IT penetration in the consumer, local business, industry and research sectors is considerably low. There are many Malaysian companies that have the potential to computerize their businesses or upgrade their computer systems but have not yet done so. The chart below details the different sectors and their market share of the PC industry.
As in most other countries, computers are widely used in banking and insurance sectors. These sectors have large companies, many which are government linked companies or multinationals. Most companies accord priority to their accounting needs and usually small and medium size companies concentrate on computerizing their accounting and financial systems before moving on to other areas of management. This conclusion is also supported by findings from a survey conducted in 1994 on IT utilization among business organizations in Malaysia.
THE PERSONAL COMPUTER MARKET IN MALAYSIA 1993
| Organization Size | Market |
| Medium Sized Enterprises | 30.63 % |
| Small Sized Enterprises | 18.33 % |
| Corporate | 17.35 % |
| Home Users | 15.31 % |
| Government | 10.21 % |
| Education | 8.17 % |
Source: Research Asia Singapore
According to the survey, the incidence of IT utilization and integration is larger among organizations involved in providing goods and services as compared to those dealing with products manufacturing and distribution. Finance and receivables systems are the business areas with heavy IT usage. The results of the survey show that while most departments use computer system, the bulk of applications (45.5%) were in the traditional areas of finance and accounts, administration, and data processing. Only 3.1% of the respondents use sophisticated technologies such as decision support systems or expert systems. With the prevailing trend of system downsizing, businesses in the small scale systems market are expected to continue to grow over the next five years with a forecasted compound average annual growth rate of 49.2 per cent in unit shipment and 41.7 per cent on shipment value through 1998.3
The Market Place
Major brands of computer hardware continue to be Japanese manufactured systems and locally configured systems. There are several distributors of American systems but they are generally more expensive than locally configured systems.
Local software sales have been hampered by the reluctance of software manufacturers to enter the because of the high level of piracy and lack of intellectual property rights. Domestic software sales are thus small but growing in double digits, sales of the large enterprise are especially robust as they are less vulnerable to piracy and a number of foreign software makers are in competition.
As technology and education in Malaysia continue to increase the IT penetration rate will continue to increase and the GoM policies will certainly help this strategy over the next several years.5
