According to IDC's latest forecast, China's ICT market(including third platform and innovation accelerator technology) will reach US$793.7 billion in 2022, an increase of 9.2% over 2021 and consistently higher than GDP growth. Digital transformation spending will reach $329.1 billion in 2022, up 18.6% from 2021, and digital transformation remains a core strategy for businesses.

In these uncertain times, IDC's annual IDC FutureScape forecast series will be more important than ever, providing information technology leaders with the guidance they need to understand not only the key external drivers that are driving this profound change, but also how to build resilience and achieve new growth faster in the face of these changes.

The top ten forecasts for China's ICT market in 2022 are as follows:

Prediction 1: The industry's deep digital acceleration, digital products and service opportunities can be extended

  The 14th Five-Year Plan clearly states: to promote the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, accelerate the digital transformation of industry, accelerate the pace of digital society construction. The "new infrastructure", the cornerstone of the digital economy, invests about Rmb2, 000bn a year. IDC predicts that by 2022, more than 50% of China's economy will be digital or digitally influenced. By 2023, one-third of companies will generate more than 30% of their revenue from digital products and services, compared with less than a fifth by 2020.

Prediction 2: Cloud market pattern has changed, edge-specific industry cloudy towards distribution

  China's top 10 public cloud manufacturers in 2020 accounted for 91% of the market share, an increase of 5 percentage points over 2018, but due to customer demand and policy guidance, edge cloud, exclusive cloud, industry cloud, cloud deployment and other trends driving the cloud market distribution, head cloud manufacturer growth slowed down, the rising star growth is rapid. IDC predicts that by 2023, 40 percent of China's top 1,000 companies will reset their cloud ion processes to focus on business outcomes rather than needs, uating their portfolio of cloud service providers, from device to edge and data to ecology, in an effort to accelerate innovation when policy is met.

Prediction 3: the rise of the concept of enterprise intelligence, intelligent prediction and intelligent decision-making value highlighted

  Artificial intelligence is one of the seven key areas focusing on digital industrialization in the 14th Five-Year Plan, and intelligent transformation is also the focus of the work of state-owned enterprises in the next 3 years. In order to better realize the value of AI, the concept of enterprise intelligence has emerged. IDC defines enterprise intelligence as an organization's learning and integrated information processing capabilities to continuously learn and apply in a strong data culture and generate scaled insights that enable the organization to improve business results. IDC predicts that by 2025, more than 60 percent of businesses will combine human expertise with artificial intelligence, machine learning, NLP, and pattern recognition to make intelligent predictions and decisions, enhance vision across the enterprise, and increase employee productivity and productivity by 25 percent. To achieve these performances, setting up a dedicated CXO to coordinate business with AI will also be required.

Prediction 4: Diversified interaction reshapes the user experience, and the concept of the metacosm continues to ferment

  User experience innovation has always been one of the core goals of digital transformation, the epidemic has accelerated the application of various new technologies and terminals, virtual pavilions, AI digital people, 5G intelligent video customer service, AR/VR terminals and so on. IDC predicts that by 2023, 50% of China's top 1,000 companies will shift half of their spending on new technology hardware and connectivity in order to reshape the user experience, and organizations that deliver great digital experiences in areas such as work, learning, entertainment, health, and space will have a long-term advantage in acquiring and maintaining customer loyalty. IDC defines the "metacosm" as an open virtual world parallel to the real world that provides immersive experiences such as gaming, shopping, socializing, and learning, and the development of the metacosm is still in the very early stages of its vast vision, which will continue to ferment in 2022, with AR/VR shipments growing rapidly.

Prediction 5: Network connection value is further highlighted, 5G scenario deployment acceleration

  The epidemic has made telecommuting for some employees of the company the new normal, the remote operation and maintenance of manufacturing enterprises is also just needed, online meetings and activities are essential, live video marketing has become an important channel, fast, stable, secure network connection has never been as important as it is now. IDC predicts that by 2022, more than 40 percent of organizations will prioritize network connectivity resiliency to ensure business continuity and the development of new application scenarios that deliver uninterrupted digital interactions and great experiences for customers, employees, and partners, which will also drive accelerated deployment of 5G applications. IDC also predicts that by 2023, 30% of China's top 1,000 companies will first develop entirely new processes as remote operations, with a very limited number of remote operations in 2020.

Prediction 6: Digital twins penetrate in all directions, and organizations begin to build virtual new infrastructure

   The concept of digital twins has been proposed for more than 10 years, but the depth of application is still less. But with the internet of Things, industrial Internet, big data, AI, 5G, cloud computing and other technologies of a large number of applications and maturity, the application of digital twins began to enter the fast lane. IDC predicts that the number of physical assets and processes modeled for digital twins will increase from 5% to 50% from 2021 to 2027, optimizing operational performance, not only reducing operating costs, but also accelerating transformation and innovation. By 2025, 30% of cities will combine physics and digital through the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and digital twin technologies, and improve remote management of critical infrastructure and digital services.

Forecast 7: "As a Service" delivery will become more widespread and enterprise IT budgets will be reallocated

  Business model innovation is one of the core values of digital transformation, and hard and soft product service is the most important measure, that is, it can increase the stickiness of users, but also can make service providers maintain stable growth. For service users, capital expenditures are greatly reduced, and the "all-as-a-service" era is approaching, especially in the ICT market. IDC predicts that by 2024, 40 percent of large enterprise IT budgets will be reallocated due to integrated "as-a-service" bundles in security, cloud platforms, virtual workspaces, and connectivity. While the benefits of faster implementation cycles, more agile deployments, and alignment with business usage are well recognized, IT teams still need to constantly monitor portfolio expansion risks. In the PC space, IDC predicts that by 2023, one in five enterprise PCs will be deployed through a device-as-a-service agreement, a share that will continue to rise throughout the forecast period.

Prediction 8: The digital ecosystem continues to be reconstructed, and the industrial Internet sees a bright light in profitability

  In the digital world, the strength of API-based ecosystem determines the strength of the core competitiveness of enterprises. Internet companies and ICT technology service providers are strengthening their ecosystems, and large industry users are leveraging digital technology to find new partners to build their own digital ecosystems. Each of the 15 industrial Internet dual-platforms rated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has ambitions to build a new ecosystem in the huge industrial Internet market through its own platform to gain greater market share. IDC predicts that by 2026, an average of 30 percent of the revenue of China's top 1,000 companies will come from an industry ecosystem of partners, which will be earned through initiatives such as sharing data, sharing apps, and sharing operations. Fifty percent of CIOs will also use the capabilities of the industry ecosystem as an important source of innovation, data sharing, differentiation, and network security risk management.

Prediction 9: Data protection and privacy challenges are enormous, and data governance and security are just a must

  The Regulations on the Security Protection of Critical Information Infrastructure and the Data Security Law came into effect on September 1, 2021, and the Personal Information Protection Law came into effect on November 1, 2021. IDC predicts that by 2024, data privacy, security, placement, use and disclosure requirements will force 80 per cent of China's largest companies to restructure their data governance processes on an autonomous basis. Successful organizations will leverage digital sovereignty as an important driver of new investments in resource/data control and are committed to reducing trust risk in areas such as network security while providing the foundation for new customer experiences, employee experiences, and remote operations. In this trend, data governance, zero trust and privacy computing, cloud and edge security are just the places for businesses to need.

Prediction 10: Dual carbon and ESG are the new agenda, technology inclusive test corporate social responsibility

  The 14th Five-Year Plan clearly proposes to strengthen environmental protection, develop a green economy, achieve carbon peak by 2030, strive to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, and better support innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development concepts. This puts forward new requirements for all enterprises, especially large enterprises, to improve the environment, sustainable development and governance, and how to use digital technology to achieve dual carbon and ESG goals is beginning to test corporate social responsibility. IDC predicts that by 2023, 50% of China's top 1000 companies will have their environmental sustainability parameters firmly embedded in their business KPIs. Fifty percent of China's top 1000 companies will need CIOs to implement sustainable information technology that embeds environmental, social, and governance practices in the technology lifecycle from procurement to disposal.