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World IT spending still to grow next year
But there are winners and losers…

By Erica Ogg

Published: Friday 14 November 2008

Industry analyst firm IDC is revising its yearly forecast on the IT budgets of companies around the world.

Because of the worldwide financial crisis, the firm expects spending on technology by enterprise companies to grow by just 2.6 per cent next year compared with 2008. Before the late-September Wall Street meltdown, IDC was predicting a worldwide spending growth rate of 5.9 percent. In the US, it was expecting 4.2 percent growth, but now IDC is revising that to just 0.9 percent.

Companies like Cisco, Nortel, Dell, and others have already indicated they've seen or expect to see IT spending drop.

With the exception of storage, hardware will be the hardest hit by the spending cutbacks, while software and services will be relatively safer, according to IDC.

Regionally, spending in Japan, Western Europe, and the US will take the biggest hit. Emerging markets like Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America will still experience "healthy" growth, according to the new forecast.

But IDC's report wasn't all doom and gloom. The firm says it expects IT spending to make "a full recovery" and reach six per cent growth by 2012.