Global IT spending will increase 5.3 percent this year to 3.39 trillion dollars, boosted by strong consumer demand for PCs and a weakening US dollar, research firm Gartner said on April 12.
"Following strong fourth-quarter sales, an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010, combined with continued improvement in the global economy, sets up 2010 for solid IT spending growth," Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement.
Gartner said nearly four percentage points of the growth will be the result of a projected decline in the value of the US dollar, with spending in exchange-rate-adjusted dollars to rise 1.6 percent this year, after a 1.4 percent fall in 2009. Gartner sees world-wide software spending rising 5.1 percent to 232 billion dollars, with the majority of enterprise software markets growing.
Global IT services spending is seen rising 5.7 percent to 821 billion dollars. "The industry experienced some growth in reported outsourcing revenue at the close of 2009, an encouraging sign for service providers," Gartner said, adding it sees this trend spreading to consulting and system integration in 2010.