Global IT spending forecast to fall

A new report from analyst house Forrester is forecasting that global IT spending this year fill fall for the first time since 2002.

In its report ‘Global IT Market Outlook: 2009’ research vice president Andrew Bartels forecasts that global IT spending will drop around three per cent in 2009, to a total worth of $1.66 trillion, and may fall even further.
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Growth rose in 2008, up eight per cent largely due to fluctuations in the value of the dollar, and Bartels expects it to rise again in 2010.

“For IT vendor market strategists, the global IT market outlook is a gloomy one for 2009, with prospects of improvement in 2010. Unlike in past years, there are no significant growth markets to offset the weak ones,” wrote Bartels.

“Indeed, the best market for vendors in 2009 and 2010 — especially those selling next-generation technology like server virtualization, service-oriented architecture software, and unified communications — may well be the US market.”

All sectors of the market are going to find spending hard to come by and the services and outsourcing market will also be affected.

Overall demand was weakest in Europe and Latin America but even the Pacific Rim and China would have a tough 2009 he predicts. American spending will be the least hard hit, but the fluctuating value of the dollar could have a major effect on growth rates.

“Our forecasts for both US and global IT purchases and IT spending in 2009 rest on two assumptions: First, that economic recession in the US and several other major economies will start to recover in the second half of 2009; and second, that the dollar in 2009 will pull back from its late 2008 strengths but not return to its early 2008 levels,” he warns.

“If the recession lasts into 2010 and becomes markedly deeper than present forecasts, the weaker-than-expected economic growth will cause tech purchases in local currencies to drop by 3 per cent or more.”

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BY Iain Thomson in San Francisco
Source：vnunet.com

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