IT spending to improve as new 'shocks' may be short-lived: Gartner

Expects worldwide IT spending to total $3.8 trillion in 2013, a 4.1% growth over 2012

Research and analyst firm, Gartner has marginally increased its worldwide IT spending growth guidance for 2013.

According to the latest forecast by Gartner, global IT spending is projected to grow 4.1% in 2013 to total $3.8 trillion as against $3.6 trillion reported in the previous year.

In its previous forecast issued in January this year, Gartner had estimated the total spending to touch $3.7 trillion in 2013.

Besides, the currency effects are less pronounced this quarter as the research firm has raised the constant dollar term growth forecast to 4% for earlier 3.9%.
 
"Although the US did avoid the fiscal cliff, the subsequent sequestration, compounded by the rise of Cyprus' debt burden, seems to have netted out any benefit, and the fragile business and consumer sentiment throughout much of the world continues," said Richard Gordon, Managing VP at Gartner in a statement.

"However, the new shocks are expected to be short-lived, and while they may cause some pauses in discretionary spending along the way, strategic IT initiatives will continue," he added.

The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is a leading indicator of major technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets.

According to the Gartner forecast, worldwide devices spending (which includes PCs, tablets, mobile phones and printers) is forecast to reach $718 billion in 2013, an increase of 7.9% from 2012 as against its earlier projected 6.3%.

Despite flat spending on PCs and a modest decline in spending on printers, a short-term boost to spending on premium mobile phones has driven an upward revision in the devices sector growth, it added.

Gartner said while the outlook for IT services sector remains relatively unchanged since last quarter, continued hesitation among buyers is fostering hyper-competition and cost pressure in mature IT outsourcing.

Spending on IT services in 2013 is estimated to grow 4.5% in 2013 to total $918 million. At this rate of growth, the IT services sector is expected to grow faster than 2012 when the spending grew by just 1.5%.

The worldwide enterprise software spending is forecast to total $297 billion in 2013, an increase of 6.4% increase from 2012. Although the growth for this segment remains unchanged from Gartner's previous forecast, this belies significant changes at a market level.

Gartner forecast expects stronger growth for database management systems, data integration tools and supply chain management among others.

However, the global telecom services market which is the largest IT spending market will remain flat over the new several years. This is primarily happening because of the decline in spending on voice services counterbalanced by strong growth in spending on mobile data services, it added.