Thailand's big data industry is expected to grow 0.19% year-on-year to 13.7 billion baht in 2021 and stay at that level next year, driven by the surge in big data analysis to develop products and services to meet market demand, says the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa).
The estimate was based on a survey and forecast of the country's big data industry, covering technology, business and industrial sectors, conducted by Depa in collaboration with Atwise Consulting.
All entrepreneurs are expected to focus on data management and security when the Personal Data Protection Act comes into force in June 2022.
Depa chief executive and president Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin said the big data industry saw year-on-year growth of 3.99% to 13.7 billion baht in 2020. Of that amount, 7.9 billion baht was from IT business services, 4.1 billion from the software market and 1.6 billion from the hardware market.
The big data industry is expected to follow the usage of cloud services, he said.
"The pandemic has pushed users to get information from the internet, so service providers need to collect more data so it can be analysed and capitalised on promptly," said Mr Nuttapon.
Technology vendors need to gear up for big data services on the cloud, which should have a positive effect on related businesses, including software and service markets, he said.
"The survey revealed entrepreneurs are capitalising on big data more to develop their products and services," said Mr Nuttapon.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, the rise of the big data industry is helping various industries to grow, such as finance, insurance, retail, manufacturing of consumer goods, logistics and education.
Entrepreneurs tend to rely on big data compiled by both state and private organisations for analysis and usage, he said.
Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, machine learning and 5G will make the big data industry more efficient in enhancing the customer experience and creating new products and services to meet customer demand, said Mr Nuttapon.
He said the growth of the big data industry from 2023 is likely to stabilise following years of development of big data projects.
In 2023, the big data industry is forecast to dip 2% to 13.4 billion baht.