According to Gartner, worldwide spending on devices such as PCs, tablets, mobile phones and printers is expected to reach $718 billion in 2013.
The growth is expected on account of a short-term boost to spending on premium mobile phones which has driven an upward revision in the devices sector growth for 2013 from Gartner’s previous forecast of the segment registering a growth of close to 6.3 per cent.
Further, the research firm estimates the worldwide IT spending to total $3.8 trillion in 2013, registering an increase of 4.1 per cent from $3.6 trillion in 2012. For 2013, spending on data center systems is forecast to grow by 3.7 per cent in 2013, from the previous estimate of 0.7 per cent. The slowdown in the expected growth is largely due to cuts to the near-term forecast for spending on external storage and the enterprise in Europe, the Middle East and Africa EMEA region.
Worldwide enterprise software spending is forecast to total $297 billion in 2013, registering an increase of 6.4 per cent from 2012. The growth for this segment remains unchanged from Gartner’s previous forecast. It belies significant changes at a market level, as stronger growth expectations for database management systems, data integration tools and supply chain management compensate for lower growth expectations for IT operations management and operating systems software.
While the outlook for IT services remains relatively unchanged since the fourth quarter of 2012, continued reluctance among buyers is fostering hyper competition and cost pressure in mature IT outsourcing (ITO) segments and reallocation of budget from new projects in consulting and implementation.
According to Gartner the global telecom services market continues to be the largest IT spending market and will remain roughly flat over the new several years, with declining spending on voice services counterbalanced by strong growth in spending on mobile data services.
