Worldwide enterprise IT spending, including telecommunications and business services, rose 5.0 percent year on year in 2019, according to IDC, which pegged a similar 5.1 percent rise for 2020 back in January. Four months later, IDC now expects overall 2020 IT spending to drop by 5.1 percent.
Gartner is even more pessimistic, expecting worldwide IT spending to fall by 8 percent this year, compared with a rise of 1 percent it calculated for 2019.
Those figures conceal significant variations between sectors.
Spending on devices such as phones and PCs will see one of the biggest swings, with IDC expecting a 12.4 percent drop in spending for 2020 compared to a rise of 0.9 percent last year. Gartner expects an even bigger fall, down by 15.5 percent, although by its figures, 2019 device spending of $698 billion was already down 2.2 percent versus the previous year.
Enterprise software vendors — which saw 10 percent growth in 2019, according to IDC, and 8.8 percent, according to Gartner — face a grim 2020, with IDC expecting sales to decline 1.9 percent this year and Gartner forecasting a 6.9 percent drop.
Telecommunications will be the least affected, both analyst firms agree, as increased demand for services such as home broadband is offset by the smaller numbers at work. IDC sees telecom spending dipping from 0.5 percent growth last year to a 0.8 percent decline this year. By Gartner’s numbers, communications services spending slipped 1.6 percent last year, and will drop a further 4.5 percent this year.
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