(Asia Pacific, Singapore, 3 October)Still own a PC or laptop older than four years old? You may be spending more on its upkeep than buying a new modern device.
Microsoft and Intel today unveiled new research from Techaisle, a leading global SMB IT market research and analyst organization, which highlighted the opportunities that Asia Pacific’s SMBs have by upgrading to modern devices at work.
A study surveyed 2,156 SMB organizations across Asia Pacific, found that the cost of keeping a PC more than four years old is US$2,736 per device — enough to replace the ageing hardware with two or more new PCs.
The study also revealed that a PC older than four years old is also 2.7 times more likely to undergo repairs, resulting in loss in productivity. 85% of larger SMBs, with more than 500 employees, have PCs that are older than four years, compared to 60% in smaller SMBs employing less than 100 employees. This underscores the widespread usage of older devices within SMBs in the region.
“PCs are the productive engines for most SMBs in the region, where organizations rely heavily on their devices for their day-to-day tasks. However, 7 in 10 SMBs surveyed have PCs that are older than four years, which significantly increases maintenance costs,” said Bradley Hopkinson, Vice President, Consumer and Devices Sales, Asia, Microsoft. “With budget constraints being the number one IT challenge among SMBs today, business leaders should seek to adopt a device modernization strategy so that they can maintain costs, while safeguarding their organization from newer digital risks.”
“SMBs constitute 98% of enterprises in the Asia Pacific region, and employ half of the workforce in the region yet many of them still have PCs older than four years old. We believe that by having them move to a modern PC powered by an Intel Core processor, they can unlock greater productivity for their business while reducing IT management time and costs,” said Santhosh Viswanathan, Managing Director, Sales and Marketing Group, Asia Pacific Japan Territory, Intel.
Respondents in the study identified their top business priorities as increasing profitability, business growth and improving workforce productivity. The study highlighted that SMBs are looking at IT as a response to address their business issues. The top IT priorities included investing in PCs, cloud solutions and security solutions.
“We found that the key barriers in migrating to a newer device were concerns of legacy applications not being able to work on a newer operating system, along with the lack of budgets. However, the benefits of adopting a modern device strategy outweighs the concerns. Too often, SMB owners focus on short term costs and while in most cases this approach is absolutely valid, at times it can lead to situations that cost them more. The choice between maintaining older PCs and replacing them with newer PCs is one such area. However, these SMBs should re-evaluate their decision given the higher cost of maintaining older PCs which has a larger cumulative effect on the budget than purchasing newer PCs with latest technology. SMBs in the region should seriously consider making the shift to a newer PC in the immediate future,” said Anurag Agrawal, CEO & Analyst, Techaisle.
