Taiwanese corporate spending on information technology (IT) this year is set to grow 4.3 percent to US$6.14 billion, with new services such as cloud computing driving the growth, market research firm International Data Corp (IDC) Taiwan said in its latest forecast. Of the total, US$3.82 billion is expected to be used for hardware, while US$835 million will be used for software and US$1.48 billion for IT services such as such as consulting, the IDC said in a list of 10 predictions for Taiwan's 2010 IT market. It attributed the growth to local companies' increasing demand for IT to innovate and transform their businesses as they try to grab the opportunity for change provided by the current economic rebound. IDC also predicted that cloud computing, virtualization and green IT will be the main players in Taiwan's information market this year, with local IT manufacturers expected to create their own cloud computing infrastructure models and platforms and roll out related services. Meanwhile, the use of Internet- based services, such as blogs, as marketing tools will be the future mode of sales, according to its forecast. It also said corporations should transform and upgrade themselves in keeping with the changes in IT market so as to maintain growth momentum in the coming decade. Netbooks will remain a focus of the market, with market share projected to be 20 percent-30 percent of the overall notebook market. Meanwhile, sales of consumer ultra-low voltage laptops will continue to grow this year to take another 20 percent of the notebook market, the IDC predicted. It also said touchscreen features will be used widely on major electronic appliances. More than 50 percent of smartphones already come with this feature. In addition, light emitting diodes (LEDs) will be more common in slim-screen TVs and computer monitors this year, according to the report. It also projected that global shipments of LED monitor products will account for 14.6 percent of liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor shipments this year. LED TVs will account for 3.8 percent of total LCD TV shipments this year, up from last year's 1.6 percent. 