Gartner says global IT spending on pace to grow 3.2% in 2014

The research firm had cut its estimate in Jan this year on account of lower growth seen in telecommunications segment

Amid gradual recovery in the global economy, Gartner today said the worldwide spending on information technology (IT) is on track to meet the research firm's estimate of $3.8 trillion in 2014, a growth of 3.2% from the previous year.

In January this year, Gartner had cut its estimate for IT spending in 2014, mainly on account of lower growth seen in telecommunications segment.

"Globally, businesses are shaking off their malaise and returning to spending on IT to support the growth of their business," said Richard Gordon, managing vice president at Gartner. "Consumers will be purchasing many new devices in 2014; however, there is a greater substitution toward lower cost and more basic devices than we have seen in prior years."

For 2013, Gartner had estimated global IT spending to grow 4.1%, however, the it grew only a tepid 0.4%.

In 2014, Gartner expects enterprise software market to grow 6.9% to $320 billion, becoming the fastest growing segment this year. The research firm estimated IT services to grow 4.6% in 2014 to $964 billion.

"IT services buyers are shifting spending from consulting (planning projects) to implementation (doing projects), and Gartner analysts expect steady growth in the IT services market as the economic outlook, and along with it investment sentiment, improves," Gartner said in a note.

The devices market, including PCs, mobile phones and tablets, is expected to return to growth in 2014, Gartner said, clocking a global spending of $689 billion, 4.4% higher than a year ago. However, it added that the demand for highly priced premium phones is slowing with consumers in mature countries preferring mid-tier premium phones and those in emerging countries favouring low-end Android basic phones.

"As market power shifts to the buyer, and key product innovations become ubiquitous, product pricing is becoming the primary differentiator," Gartner said.

Gartner estimates data center systems spending to reach $143 billion in 2014, 2.3% higher than a year ago. In the network equipment trends, cloud and mobility are seen as the biggest demand drivers. "Virtualisation and cloud adoption are generating significant market traction for data center ethernet switches, and the proliferation of mobile endpoints is continuing to drive significant demand for the wireless LAN equipment market," it said,

Gartner also reiterated that spending in telecommunications services--a segment that accounts for more than 40% of total IT spending--will grow only by 1.3% in 2014 to $1.655 trillion.