Gartner: total global tech spending will rise 4% YoY to $4.4T in 2022, device spending will reach $824.6B, and software spending will rise 9.8% YoY to $674.9B
The respected analyst firm Gartner Inc. said today in its latest forecast that worldwide information technology is expected …
Context & Ripple Effects
Gartner's April 2022 forecast of 4% growth to $4.4T landed just months after the firm tallied record 2021 chip sales of $583.5B, up 25%, and days before it separately projected 2022 cloud spending up 20% to $494.7B. The headline number reads as a deceleration from 2021's double-digit pace, but the composition matters more: software growing 9.8% to $674.9B against device spending capped at $824.6B.
The arc since then is a story of steady markdowns. By August, Gartner had cut the 2022 outlook to ~3% growth, and its final tally showed spending actually declined 0.2% to $4.38T — making this April forecast the high-water mark of the year's optimism.
First-order effects
- CIOs setting 2022 budgets in April were told to plan around software as the fastest-growing line at 9.8%, while the $824.6B device figure signaled hardware demand plateauing after the pandemic upgrade cycle.
Second-order effects
- The software strength maps directly onto Gartner's parallel cloud forecast — 20% growth in corporate cloud spend to $494.7B — meaning budget growth concentrates in SaaS and platform vendors rather than device makers, squeezing hardware margins as component costs from the 2021 chip boom stay elevated.
Third-order effects
- The sequence of revisions — 4% in April, ~3% by August, a 0.2% decline in the final count — established IT spending forecasts as a leading macro indicator, with the durable pattern that software and cloud budgets hold up while device purchases absorb the cuts when uncertainty hits.
The trend: IT spending growth forecasts for 2022 were progressively marked down as macro conditions deteriorated, with the spending mix shifting from devices toward software and cloud services that proved more resilient.