Gartner halves IT spending forecast as PC sales shrivel

Market watcher now expects 2013 growth to limp in at two per cent

The ailing PC market has partly led Gartner to more than halve its global IT spending forecast for 2013.

Last quarter, the analyst reckoned worldwide IT spending would jump 4.1 per cent this year, but today chopped the prediction down to just two per cent - which should take spending levels to $3.6tn (£2.36tn) by the end of the year.

Exchange rate movements shouldered part of the blame for the forecast reduction, along with the faltering devices market, which it now forecasts will grow by just 2.8 per cent (compared with its previous projection of 7.9 per cent).

Spending on devices - PCs, tablets and smartphones - is expected to reach $695bn by the end of the year, and will be propped up by growing sales of the latter two form factors, which will jump annually by 38.9 per cent and 9.3 per cent respectively this year.

Gartner said the decline in PC sales recorded at the start of the year carried on in Q2, and that "little recovery" is expected during the second half of this year.

The analyst said: "While new devices are set to hit the market in the second half of 2013, they will fail to compensate for the underlying weakness of the traditional PC market."

By the end of next year, growth in the devices segment is predicted to pick up again and jump 6.5 per cent annually to $740bn.

Elsewhere in its 2013 spending forecast, Gartner claimed enterprise software will grow the most of all the segments - by 6.4 per cent annually to $304bn - driven by a growing CRM market sparked by its expansion into e-commerce, social and mobile.

Datacentre systems spending this year is set to grow year on year by 2.1 per cent to $143bn, while IT services and telecoms spending will grow annually by 2.2 per cent and 0.9 per cent respectively by the end of the year.