Worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach USD 3.4 trillion in this year, a 5.3 percent increase from IT spending of USD 3.2 trillion in 2009, according to a study by Gartner. Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner stated that following strong fourth quarter sales, an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter, combined with continued improvement in the global economy, sets up this year for solid IT spending growth. However, nearly 4 percent will be the result of a projected decline in the value of the dollar relative to last year.

IT spending in exchange-rate-adjusted dollars will still grow 1.6 percent this year, after declining 1.4 percent in 2009. The IT industry will continue to show steady growth with IT spending in 2011 projected to surpass USD 3.5 trillion, a 4.2 percent increase from this year. Worldwide computing hardware spending is forecast to reach USD 353 billion in this year, a 5.7 percent increase from 2009. Robust consumer spending on mobile PCs will drive hardware spending. Enterprise hardware spending will grow again, but it will remain below its 2008 level through 2014. Spending on storage will enjoy the fastest growth in terms of enterprise spending as the volume of enterprise data that needs to be stored continues to increase. Near-term spending on servers will be concentrated on lower-end servers; longer-term, server spending will be curtailed by virtualisation, consolidation and, potentially, cloud computing. Worldwide software spending is expected to total USD 232 billion in this year, up 5.1 percent from last year.

Gartner analysts said the impact of the recession on the software industry was tempered and not as dramatic as other IT markets. In this year, the majority of enterprise software markets will see positive growth. The hottest software segments through 2014 include virtualisation, security, data integration/data quality and business intelligence. The applications market has some of the fastest-growth segments. Web conferencing, team collaboration and enterprise content management are forecast to have double-digit CAGR, in the face of growing competition surrounding social networking and content.

The worldwide IT services industry is forecast to have spending reach USD 821 billion, up 5.7 percent from 2009. The industry experienced some growth in reported outsourcing revenue at the close of 2009, an encouraging sign for service providers, which Gartner analysts believe will spread to consulting and system integration in this year.

Worldwide telecommunication spending is on pace to total close to USD 2 trillion in this year, a 5.1 percent increase from 2009. Between 2010 and 2014, the mobile device share of the telecommunication market is expected to increase from 11 percent to 14 percent, while the service share drops from 80 percent to 77 percent and the infrastructure share remains stable at 9 percent of the total market. Worldwide enterprise network services spending is forecast to grow 2 percent in revenue in this year, but Gartner analysts said this masks ongoing declines in Europe and many other mature markets as well as an essentially flat North American market.