Global IT spending to hit $3.8 trillion in 2019

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The latest forecast from Gartner has revealed that worldwide IT spending is projected to reach $3.76tn in 2019 which is up by 3.2 per cent from last year.

The company's research vice president John-David Lovelock explained that IT spending is still set to increase despite growing concerns over Brexit and the ongoing trade war between the US and China, saying:

“Despite uncertainty fuelled by recession rumours, Brexit, and trade wars and tariffs, the likely scenario for IT spending in 2019 is growth. However, there are a lot of dynamic changes happening in regards to which segments will be driving growth in the future. Spending is moving from saturated segments such as mobile phones, PCs and on-premises data centre infrastructure to cloud services and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. IoT devices, in particular, are starting to pick up the slack from devices. Where the devices segment is saturated, IoT is not.”

Lovelock also noted that IT has become more than a platform that enables organisations to run their business and it is quickly becoming the engine that drives businesses forward.

IT growth

Gartner's forecast highlights communication services as the top area that will see continued investment this year followed by IT services, devices, enterprise software and data centre systems.

The shift to cloud has been a key driver of IT spending and enterprise software will continue to show strong signs of growth with worldwide software spending projected to grow by 8.5 percent in 2019 and 8.2 percent in 2020 to total $466bn.

As consumers have begun to hold onto their smartphones longer, the mobile phone market dipped by 1.2 percent in 2018. Despite this slowdown, the devices segment is expected to grow by 1.6 percent in 2019 as smartphone makers look to differentiate their offerings from the competition with new technologies such as folding displays and in-display fingerprint readers.

Gartner also believes the skills shortage is far from over as internal staff are falling behind as their organisations adopt new technologies to help drive digital business. This will likely remain the case as the skill requirements needed to work with AI, machine learning and data science continue to evolve and change faster than ever before.

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