IT contractors may be interested to learn that industry analyst Gartner has revised its prediction for worldwide IT spending this year.
The company had originally predicted growth of 3.7% but has downgraded this forecast to 2.5%, the equivalent of £2.3 trillion, as companies continue to increase spending on the latest technologies.
In fact the revised prediction is more due to the strengthening dollar than to spending actually declining, according to analysts from Gartner. The dollar has been improving against other worldwide currencies and this this has reduced the predicted growth rate.
Gartner believes that if currencies were balanced, IT spending would grow by 5.2% this year.
Richard Gordon, Gartner’s research vice-president, said there are signs that the global economic outlook is improving despite the on-going global economic unrest. As well as problems in the Eurozone, the global economy is struggling to cope with rising oil prices and there are worries over China’s real estate bubble.
Public sector IT spending is likely to contract slightly throughout the world this year and next as Eurozone austerity measures impact. In the US Gartner predicts that public IT spending will remain flat this year and then contract slightly in 2013.
However, the mid-size business sector is expected to put in a strong performance over the next five years as companies increase their spend on enterprise software. The worldwide telecom equipment sector is expected to display the strongest growth.
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