BackWorldwide IT spending to rise 4.2% in 2013: Gartner
Spending on devices like PCs, tablets, mobile phones and printers forecasted to reach $666 bn, up 6.3%
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London: Global spending on information technology (IT) will grow 4.2% to $3.7 trillion in 2013, researcher Gartner Inc. said on Thursday, revising its earlier prediction of 3.8%, primarily because many currencies are expected to gain against the US dollar.
In constant dollar terms, the spending growth will rise 3.9%.
The uncertainties surrounding the revival of the global economy have been “major retardants" in the growth of the IT sector, managing vice-president Richard Gordon said in a statement. “However, much of this uncertainty is nearing resolution; and as it does, we look for accelerated spending growth in 2013 compared to 2012," Gordon said.
Growth of many Indian IT companies have slowed. Big firms such as Infosys Ltd and Wipro Ltd grew revenue in single digits in 2012.
The sluggishness from 2012 may continue in the initial months of this year, according to Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia, a Hong Kong brokerage. “We expect IT budgets to be flattish to down," analysts Nimish Joshi and Arati Mishra said in a statement on Thursday.
Gartner said worldwide spending on devices such as personal computers, tablets, mobile phones and printers is likely to grow 6.3% to $666 billion in 2013. This falls below its previous forecast of $706 billion and 7.9% growth, mainly due to increased competition among devices running on the Android operating system.
“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 towards 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," Gartner’s Gordon said.
Nasdaq-listed Gartner also reduced its long-term forecast for worldwide spending on devices from 2012 to 2016 to an annual 5.1% in constant dollar terms, down from 7.4% predicted earlier . The researcher also forecast worldwide enterprise software spending to rise 6.4% to $296 billion in 2013, driven by security, storage management and customer relationship management software.
Growth in the telecommunications market, the largest IT services spender, will be predominantly flat in the next several years as revenue from mobile data will compensate for declines in total spending for the fixed and mobile voice markets, it said. Gartner expects mobile data to represent 33% of the total telecom services market by 2016, up from 225 in 2012.
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