Gartner Trims Worldwide IT Spending Growth Forecast to 3.9 Percent for 2010
Analysts to Discuss Latest Outlook for the IT Industry During Upcoming Gartner Webinar “IT Spending Forecast, 2Q10 Update: Growth in an Age of Austerity” on July 6 — Worldwide IT spending is forecast …
Context & Ripple Effects
This trim arrives barely a year after Gartner forecast that the PC industry would suffer [[a:none|the sharpest unit decline in its history]] in 2009 — 257 million units — making 2010 the anticipated rebound year. Cutting projected worldwide growth back to 3.9 percent signals that recovery is arriving weaker and slower than vendors had pencilled in.
Gartner is delivering the revision through a July 6 webinar pointedly titled "Growth in an Age of Austerity," and the framing does analytical work: the firm sees spending expanding, but under budget discipline rather than renewed expansion.
First-order effects
- Vendors who built 2010 sales plans on a stronger rebound now face enterprise buyers holding discretionary projects against leaner budgets, right on top of the record 2009 PC shipment trough Gartner itself forecast.
Second-order effects
- With fewer incremental dollars in play, hardware, software and services vendors are pushed into sharper price competition and into re-prioritising maintenance-and-refresh deals over new-build commitments.
Third-order effects
- If sub-4-percent growth becomes the norm rather than the dip, corporate IT settles into austerity-era budgeting — every purchase cost-justified — and quarterly Gartner forecast revisions harden into the industry's de facto sentiment gauge.
The trend: Post-recession corporate IT spending is settling into low-single-digit growth, with cost discipline rather than expansion setting the agenda.