Gartner Predicts 4.2% Growth in IT spending in 2013

Gartner put on a return to growth of IT spending in 2013. According to the research firm, the global IT spending on information technology costs, hardware, software and IT services is expected to grow 4.2% in 2013 to reach $3.73 trillion.

Gartner put on a sustainable growth as the firm expects an additional 3.8% increase in 2014. However, Gartner indicates that much of the projected earnings for 2013 will be due to currency effects as the firm assuming a weakening of the dollar against other major international currencies.

Uncertainties surrounding prospects for an upturn in global economic growth are the major retardants to IT growth. This uncertainty has caused the pessimistic business and consumer sentiment throughout the world. However, much of this uncertainty is nearing resolution, and as it does, we look for accelerated spending growth in 2013 compared to 2012.

Broken down by segment, Gartner said telecommunications services could generate the largest portion of revenues global IT market, with revenues of $1.7 trillion, and spending on computing devices will reach $666 billion in 2013, a 6.3 percent increase compared to 2012. With influx of low-priced tablets and devices, the growth will slow down to 4.2 percent at $694 billion in 2014.

The main reason for the lowered growth estimate is that the shift away from the traditional PC form factors, the desktop and the laptop, toward new form factors, most notably the tablet, is happening a lot faster than we thought, said Gartner.

The tablet market has seen greater price competition from Android devices as well as smaller, low-priced devices in emerging markets. It is ultimately this shift toward relatively lower-priced tablets that lowers our average selling prices forecast for 2012 through 2016, which in turn is responsible for slowing device spending growth in general, and PC and tablet spending growth in particular.

Sales of business software would see a rise of 6.4% to $296 billion in the current year. The sector will be driven by security, storage management and CRM. However, beginning in 2014, markets aligned to big data and other information management initiatives, such as enterprise content management, data integration tools, and data-quality tools will begin to see increased levels of investment. In fact, big data-related role will create total of 6 million jobs in the U.S over the next four years.

The latest research of CIO Magazine Tech Poll/Tech Priorities is similarly bullish about increased spending on business intelligence, cloud and mobile technology. The report projected that IT decision-makers are expected to increase spending on mobile technology, cloud computing services, and business intelligence and analytics over the next 12 months.