The annual predictions of IDC are a highly valued outlook on events of the industry, user trends and vendor strategies, which will define the IT industry over the next year. Based on the research of more than 1,200 IDC analysts worldwide, this IDC event will display, in which direction the IT industry will move in 2012.

In 2012, the ICT industry’s shift to its third major platform of growth — built on mobile, cloud, social, and Big Data technologies — will accelerate, forcing the industry’s leaders to make bold investments and fateful decisions. By the end of 2012, we’ll have a good idea which vendors will — and won’t — be among the industry’s leaders in 2020.

Some prediction topics are…

• Worldwide IT spending will grow 6.9. Mobile devices and apps and emerging markets will be the biggest growth drivers, while European debt issues will dominate downside risks.
• Emerging markets IT spending will grow 13.8%. In the second half of 2012, China will supplant Japan as number 2 in the IT market.
• “Mobility wins” will be the top theme of the year as mobile devices outship PCs by more than 2 to 1 and generate more revenue than PCs for the first time. 85 billion mobile apps will be downloaded, and mobile data network spending will exceed fixed data network spending for the first time.
• Big Data will join mobile and cloud as the next “must have” competency as the volume of digital content grows to 2.7ZB (1ZB = 1 billion terabytes) in 2012, up 48% from 2011, rocketing toward 8ZB by 2015. There will be lots of Big Data– driven mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity.
• Major IT vendors will make “statement” acquisitions in social networking as social technologies become a core part of IT’s next growth platform. Social platform leader Facebook will attempt to leverage its consumer dominance into a much broader role serving businesses in B2C commerce.

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