Indian service providers accounted for 1.9% of the total US $672 billion IT services market in 2006.

Gartner Inc, in a new research report, stated that the top six India-centric offshore service providers accounted for 1.9 percent of the total US $672 billion IT services market in 2006, compared to 0.5 percent of the US $554 billion IT services market in 2001.

The service provider companies are collectively referred to as SWITCH companies. These companies are:

• TCS
• Infosys
• Wipro
• Cognizant
• Satyam
• HCL Technologies

The URL to the report at Gartner is: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=526008.

Analyzing for example, the revenue growth of the leading global and Indian provider in 2006, it can be seen that despite IBM’s $48 billion total IT service revenue, its dollar growth year over year was less than $1 billion. TCS on the other hand increased its revenues by over $1.2 billion in 2006, and achieved this increase from a revenue base 1/18th of IBM’s size.

Nevertheless, while these six leading India-centric providers are enjoying strong growth rates, it would still take them a number of years to challenge the top service providers or appear among the top three market share leader roles — unless they make a major acquisition.