IT spending, worldwide, will decline 0.5 percent this year, Gartner forecasts. The market analyst firm says this year’s forecast totals $3.49 trillion, down from $3.50 trillion which were spent in 2015. Last quarter’s forecast was 0.5 percent growth, and these new changes are mainly due to currency fluctuations, Gartner says.
"There is an undercurrent of economic uncertainty that is driving organizations to tighten their belts, and IT spending is one of the casualties", said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "Concurrently, the need to invest in IT to support digital business is more urgent than ever. Business leaders know that they need to become digital businesses or face irrelevance in a digital world. To make that happen, leaders are engaging in tough cost optimization efforts in some areas to fund digital business in others".
Device markets (PCs, laptops, ultramobiles, mobile phones, tablets and printers) will continue to shrink, and sales will continue to drop this year. At the same time, the spending on data centers and enterprise software will continue to grow.
The device market is forecast to decline 3.7 percent. "The underlying reasons are a combination of factors and are geography-specific, and the worsening economic conditions in many countries only serve to amplify the impact of these factors", Gartner says in the press release.
Spending on data centers will reach $175 billion in 2016, representing a 2.1 percent increase, compared to a year before. Spending on enterprise software is expected to hit $321 billion globally this year, a 4.2 percent increase from 2015.
The full Gartner report can be found on this link.
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