Opportunity for IT vendors especially strong in Cloud Services, says AMI
NEW YORK -- Weathering the economic storm over the past few years has been difficult for most businesses, especially the smallest. But despite the economic downturn (or perhaps because of it) home-based business (HBB) appears to be a growth sector for employment in the U.S. Not only that, but HBBs are showing strong signs of growth plans in the future.
According to AMI's recent study, 2010 U.S. Home-Based Business Annual Market Overview, there was an 11% increase in those who started their HBB due to downsizing last year in the U.S. It stands to reason that when some employees are downsized from larger companies, they are motivated to make their own employment path by starting their own company from their home office.
"What's interesting is that 80% of those who became HBBs because of downsizing from a larger company," says Jessica Efta, Manager of Market Development for AMI-Partners, "do not plan to return to the corporate workforce. They plan to stay HBBs for the long term. With today's technologies, a small business owner does not have to have a storefront or office building to conduct a successful business."
It seems small HBBs have big plans for the future. Last year sole proprietorships made up two thirds of the home-based business market; this year it is only one third of the total market, indicating HBBs are growing through hiring employees. This trend will likely continue. Over the last year, there was a 10% jump in respondents who say they have plans to grow the business and hire more employees. Reported revenues became positive for HBBs in 2010 and projections show positive growth expectations for 2011.
What this means for IT vendors is increased opportunity. As average employee size increased, so did average PCs per firm. Cloud computing is another area of strong interest among HBBs. One quarter of U.S. HBBs are interested in procuring hosted applications, nearly double the amount of their nearest cousins (small businesses operating out of a commercial setting with fewer than 5 employees). Considering the 16 million HBBs in the U.S. market, this translates to a significant number.
Related Study
AMI's 2010 U.S. Home-Based Business Annual Market Overview, offers a comprehensive view of the US HBB market and the opportunity for IT vendors. Topics covered include: Firmographics, Attitudes and Behaviors, Preferences and Interest, ICT Spend, ICT Current and Planned Usage, Cloud Services and Applications, Purchase Process, Channels, and more.
For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, call 212-944-5100, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com or visit www.ami-partners.com.
About Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc.
AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence -- with a strong focus on global small and medium businesses (SMBs), and extending into large enterprises and home-based businesses. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business strategy perspectives and --go-to-market solutions. Led by Andy Bose, the firm has built a world-class management team with deep experience cutting across IT, telecommunications and business services sectors in established and emerging markets.
AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 25 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.
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