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Global IT spending to rise over 3% to $3.8 trillion [Khaleej Times (United Arab Emirates)]
[January 11, 2014]

Global IT spending to rise over 3% to $3.8 trillion [Khaleej Times (United Arab Emirates)]


(Khaleej Times (United Arab Emirates) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Worldwide IT spending is projected to increase more than three per cent to $3.8 trillion in 2014, compared to $3.7 trillion in 2013, according to the latest forecast by Gartner.



Tablets and laptops displayed at the 2014 CES in Las Vegas. — AFP Spending on devices — including PCs, ultramobiles, mobile phones and tablets — contracted 1.2 per cent in 2013, but it will grow 4.3 per cent in 2014, the report said.

Gartner analysts said convergence of the PC, ultramobiles including tablets — and mobile phone segments, as well as erosion of margins, will take place as differentiation will soon be based primarily on price instead of devices' orientation to specific tasks.


Enterprise software spending growth continues to be the strongest throughout the forecast period. The 2014 annual growth rate is expected to be 6.8 per cent.

"Investment is coming from exploiting analytics to make B2C processes more efficient and improve customer marketing efforts. Investment will also be aligned to B2B analytics, particularly in the SCM space, where annual spending is expected to grow 10.6 per cent in 2014," said Richard Gordon, managing vice-president at Gartner. "The focus is on enhancing the customer experience throughout the presales, sales and post sales processes," Gordon added.

The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is the leading indicator of major technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets. For more than a decade, global IT and business executives have been using these highly anticipated quarterly reports to recognise market opportunities and challenges, and base their critical business decisions on proven methodologies.

Last quarter, Gartner's forecast for 2014 IT spending growth in US dollars was 3.6 per cent, a 0.5 percentage points higher than the current forecast.

"A downward revision of the 2014 forecast growth in spending for telecom services — a segment that accounts for more than 40 per cent of total IT spending — from 1.9 per cent to 1.2 per cent is the main reason behind this overall IT spending growth reduction," Gordon said.

PC shipments ?continue to fall BEIJING — Worldwide PC shipments fell 10 per cent last year to 314.6 million units as manufacturers could not stop consumers opting for smartphones and tablets instead, showed preliminary data from researcher IDC.

Shipments reached 82.2 million personal computers in October-December, 5.6 per cent less than in the same period a year earlier and the seventh consecutive quarter of decline.

"The PC market again came in very close to expectations, but unfortunately failed to significantly change the trajectory of growth," said Loren Loverde, a vice president at IDC, in the market researcher's latest global PC shipment report released on Friday. — Reuters "A number of factors are involved, including the faster-than-expected growth of wireless-only households, declining voice rates in China and a more frugal usage pattern among European customers. The latter coincides in Western Europe with a breakout of fierce price competition among communications service providers to retain customers and attract new ones." The data centre systems spending growth outlook for 2014 has been cut from 2.9 per cent in our previous forecast to 2.6 per cent. This is mainly due to a reduction in the forecast for external controller-based storage and enterprise communications applications. These represent 32 per cent of total data centre system end-user spending.

Gartner has slightly revised downward the IT services compound annual growth rate between 2012 and 2017. The largest contributor to this revision comes from reductions in IT outsourcing — specifically, in colocation, hosting and data center outsourcing growth rates.

"We are seeing CIOs increasingly reconsidering data center build-out and instead planning faster-than-expected moves to cloud computing. We continue to anticipate consistent four to five per cent annual growth through 2017," Gordon said.

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