Today in Tech: Gartner's outlook on IT Outsourcing; Coopetition & Micr...

What does this mean for Indian IT Services companies? It seems as if Cloud, an area into which many companies are still taking the first few cautious steps, will eat into traditional applications outsourcing segment faster than we think. (Incidentally, Infosys announced its new cloud solution yesterday.)Here's a snapshot of IT Outsourcing market in 2012, as Gartner sees itTotal IT outsourcing services: 2.1% ($251.7 billion)Data center outsourcing: (-1%) (~ $85 billion)Application outsourcing: 2% ($40.7 billion)Cloud compute services: 48.7% ($5.0 billion)Asia/Pacific: 1% in 2012 and exceed 2.5% in 2013.Western Europe: (-1.9%)North America: ITO to grow through 2016. Acer on Microsoft's SurfaceThe term Co-opetition is hardly new in the world of business. For a long time, managers have cooperated with other companies in some areas, and fiercely competed with them in others. It’s largely seen as a positive for an industry as a whole.(Here’s a presentation by Barry Nalebuff, an Yale professor, who has written a book on the subject.)The term was invoked recently when Microsoft announced Surface tablets. It meant, on the one hand, Microsoft would supply operating systems to hardware makers, and on the other, it would be competing with them on tablets market. Microsoft knew this would lead to tension, and the first company to come out open on this was Acer.This is what Acer’s chairman and chief executive JT Wang had to tell Financial Times: “We have said [to Microsoft] think it over. Think twice. It will create a huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction. It is not something you are good at so please think twice.”Interestingly, Apple is also locked in a duel with one of its vendors-cum-competitor, Samsung.

Apple's reliance on Samsung chips for its best-selling phones and tablets will be worth as much as $7.5 billion to Samsung this year, a 60 percent jump from 2011, research firm Gartner Inc. estimates. Because Apple would struggle to find an alternate supplier for the main processor in its mobile devices, the computer maker can't quit buying from its competitor anytime soon, whatever the trial's outcome. [more]