World IT spending to reach $3.8 trillion in 2015

Sales graph on tablet PC

Gartner predict $3.8 trillion (2.52 trillion) will be spent on IT in 2015, which equates to a 2.4 per cent year-on-year increase.

Although the growth is encouraging, it's lower than previous predictions of 3.9 per cent. The research firm said the reason for this is because the US dollar value has risen, while it thinks devices, IT services and telecom services will contract.

John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, said: "The change in forecast is less dramatic than it might at first seem. The rising US dollar is chiefly responsible for the change in constant currency terms the downward revision is only 0.1 per cent.

"Stripping out the impact of exchange rate movements, the corresponding constant-currency growth figure is 3.7 per cent, which compares with 3.8 per cent in the previous quarter's forecast."

The fastest growing sector will be the enterprise IT space, which Gartner predicts will increase by 5.5 per cent this year. Hitting $335 billion, the growth can be credited to price erosion and vendor consolidation due to companies in the cloud and on-premises industries competing more fiercely.

Prices in the customer relationship management (CRM) market and sales force automation (SFA) are expected to decrease by around 25 per cent by 2018, making it a key time for enterprises to analyse their needs and re-invest where applicable.

Gartner continued its predictions with claims the IT services industry will grow by 2.5 per cent, although that's a significant reduction in original forecasting that suggests the market would grow by 4.1 per cent. The reason for this downgrade is because key markets such as Russia and Brazil are shrinking, having a knock-on effect on worldwide growth.

Datacentres will be responsible for a 1.8 per cent increase on 2014 figures, with Gartner predicting the sector will be worth $143 billion this year, while telecoms services will see the smallest growth of just 0.7 per cent.

Clare Hopping
Freelance writer

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.