Gartner said that Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.76 trillion in 2019, an increase of 3.2 percent from 2018.
Despite uncertainty fueled by recession rumors, Brexit and trade wars and tariffs, the likely scenario for IT spending in 2019 is in growth, but there are a lot of dynamic changes happening in regards to which segments that will be driving growth in the future. Spending is moving from saturated segments such as mobile phones, PCs and on-premises data center infrastructure to cloud services and Internet of Things devices. IoT devices, in particular, are starting to pick up the slack from devices. Where the devices segment is saturated, IoT is not.
IT is no longer just a platform that enables organizations to run their business on. It will become the engine that moves the business. As digital business and digital business ecosystems move forward, IT will be the thing that binds the business together.
Since the shift is to cloud, a key driver of IT spending, enterprise software will continue to exhibit strong growth, with worldwide software spending projected to grow 8.5 percent in 2019. It will grow another 8.2 percent in 2020 to total $466 billion. Organizations are expected to increase spending on enterprise application software in 2019, with more of the budget shifting to software as a service.
Here are the tables:
Table 1. Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)
| 2018
Spending |
2018
Growth (%) |
2019
Spending |
2019
Growth (%) |
2020 Spending | 2020 Growth (%) | |
| Data Center Systems | 202 | 11.3 | 210 | 4.2 | 202 | -3.9 |
| Enterprise Software | 397 | 9.3 | 431 | 8.5 | 466 | 8.2 |
| Devices | 669 | 0.5 | 679 | 1.6 | 689 | 1.4 |
| IT Services | 983 | 5.6 | 1,030 | 4.7 | 1,079 | 4.8 |
| Communications Services | 1,399 | 1.9 | 1,417 | 1.3 | 1,439 | 1.5 |
| Overall IT | 3,650 | 3.9 | 3,767 | 3.2 | 3,875 | 2.8 |
Tables from Gartner
Despite a slowdown in the mobile phone market, the devices segment is expected to grow 1.6 percent in 2019. The largest and most highly saturated smartphone markets, such as China, Unites States and Western Europe, are driven by replacement cycles. With Samsung facing challenges bringing well-differentiated premium smartphones to market and Apple’s high price-to-value benefits for its flagship smartphones, consumers kept their current phones and drove the mobile phone market down 1.2 percent in 2018.
