Gartner says 2022 global IT spending dropped 0.2% to $4.38T, below an estimated 0.8% rise, and expects 2.4% growth in 2023, weighed down by economic uncertainty
Context & Ripple Effects
Gartner's 2022 numbers are the endpoint of a year-long downgrade cycle it ran itself: an April forecast of 4% growth to $4.4T was cut by August to roughly 3%, and the actual result is a 0.2% contraction to $4.38T. The same pattern held in 2020, when Gartner's survey called an 8% pandemic-driven decline — making this the second demand shock in three years that its mid-year revisions failed to fully price.
First-order effects
- Vendors that built 2022 plans on Gartner's spring forecast sold into a flat-to-shrinking $4.38T market instead of a growing one, with the shortfall concentrated outside cloud, which Gartner had separately pegged at 20% growth to $494.7B.
Second-order effects
- With cloud still expanding while the total contracted, non-cloud categories — devices above all — absorbed the entire decline, pressuring hardware pricing and undercutting the 9% chip-sales growth Gartner projected for 2022 off 2021's record $583.5B.
Third-order effects
- If budget growth stays near the 2.4% Gartner projects for 2023, IT spending consolidates around the few lines still compounding — cloud services chief among them — shifting vendor leverage toward platform providers and away from device and hardware sellers.
The trend: Global IT budgets are entering a low-growth regime in which spending growth concentrates in cloud platforms while devices and hardware bear the cuts.