The content on this page and other DCITA document archive pages is provided to assist research and may contain references to activities or policies that have no current application. See the full archive disclaimer.
Extent of ICT production in Australian SMEs
The May 2005 Sensis® Business Index found that overall 17 per cent of SMEs were involved in some form of production of information and communication technology (ICT) goods or services. This included:
- those firms that produced ICT goods and services for sale (six per cent of all SMEs);
- those firms that produced ICT for use within their business (ten per cent of all SMEs);
- those firms that produced ICT that was then embedded in non-ICT goods and services that they sold (six per cent of all SMEs); and
- those firms that developed software in the last two years (seven per cent of all SMEs).
Again, there was some overlap between these four categories, with some SMEs being involved in all facets of ICT production, while other SMEs were only involved in one area of production, but in total, 17 per cent of all SMEs reported at least some involvement in some facet of ICT production. This result was consistent with the 16 per cent of SMEs that were found to be involved in ICT production in May 2004.
Traditionally, ICT production has been thought of as predominantly occurring within the following ANZSIC codes: 2841, 2842, 2849, 2852, 4613, 4614, 4615, 7120, 7831, 7832, 7833 and 7834. The ICT sector, as defined by these ANZSIC codes, accounted for three per cent of the weighted sample of the May 2005 Sensis® Business Index.
Interestingly , 81 per cent of firms in the ICT sector had been involved in any aspect of ICT production, an increase from 60 per cent in the May 2004 Sensis® Business Index. Some SMEs in the ICT sector that are not involved directly in ICT production may be involved with other aspects of the ICT industry, for example distribution of technology. Questions in this survey were aimed purely at identifying ICT production.
Open an enlarged version of this graph
However, more importantly, of the ICT production that was found to occur in this survey, only 15 per cent of firms occurred within the ICT sector, with the vast majority, of 85 per cent of production occurring in firms outside the ICT sector. This was an increase from 11 per cent in May 2004. These findings are examined in greater detail in the following sections.
Back to ICT Production in Australian SMEs | Table of contents | Forward to Industry profile of ICT producing SMEs