Gartner: Global IT spend will top $3.7tn in 2012

IT spending by medium-sized businesses will be the top performer over the next five years, and global SMB spend will reach $1tn by 2016

Global IT spending is set to total $3.7tn (£2.3tn) in 2012, up 2.5 per cent on 2011, according to the latest figures from Gartner.

But this is a drop on the original 3.7 per cent growth for 2012 predicted by the market watcher, mainly attributed to the strengthening of the value of the US dollar against other currencies.

Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, said: “Despite ongoing concerns about the global economic recovery – most notably around the resolution of eurozone sovereign debt problems, worries about the potential for China’s real estate ‘bubble’ to spill over and affect the rest of the economy and rising oil prices – early signs in 2012 suggest that the global economic outlook has brightened a little.”

Segmenting spend by technology, Gartner predicts that global spending on computing hardware is set to reach $421bn in 2012 compared with $404bn in 2011; enterprise software spend will reach $280bn, compared with $267bn the previous year; IT services will be $856bn compared with $845bn in 2011; spending on telecoms equipment will reach $472bn compared with $442bn, and telecom services spending will hit $1,721bn, compared with $1,704bn in 2011.

The analyst said spending in the government sector is expected to contract moderately on a global basis in 2012/13, driven by austerity measures in the eurozone.

In the SMB space, which represents about a quarter of all enterprise IT spend, spending is forecast to reach $874bn in 2012 and will grow to $1tn by 2016.

Gartner claimed that mid-sized business IT spending will outperform other sectors in each of the next five years, mainly driven by growth in spending on enterprise software.

The global telecoms equipment market is set to show the strongest growth, according to Gartner, reaching $472bn in 2012, up 6.9 per cent on 2011.