A week after Forrester Research predicted a 10.6% drop in global information technology spending this year, fellow research firm Gartner has pointed to a 6% decline, predicting a total worldwide IT spend of $3.2 trillion in 2009.
Like Forrester, Gartner sees software, which accounts for 7% of the IT market, to be the least affected by the downturn, sliding only 1.6%.
The worst affected will be the IT hardware sector, which will account for a little more than 10% of the total market in 2009. It will decline more than 18% to $318 billion. IT services, the mainstay of India's IT earnings, will decline by 5.6% to $761 billion in 2009. The biggest component of the IT business, telecom, which accounts for 59% of the total market, will slide by 4.6%.
"The forecast decline in spending growth for the hardware and software segments in 2009 has almost stabilised, and only minor downward revisions have been made to these forecasts this quarter," said Richard Gordon, research vice-president and head of global forecasting at Gartner.
"However, the full impact of the global recession on the IT services and telecommunication sectors is still emerging, and forecast growth in these areas has been further reduced significantly. Moreover, the rise in the value of the US dollar against most currencies in recent months will have a material downward impact on 2009 IT spending growth, which by convention we report based on US dollars," he said.
Correction, July 8, 2009: The IT hardware sector will account for a little more than 10% of the total market in 2009 and not 10% of the total market drop as was stated earlier.
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