Gartner: Still No Economic Recovery for IT Spending, Sales

Gartner is now forecasting a 6 percent decline in IT spending for 2009, representing a more significant decline than the market research firm’s previous forecast of a 3.8 percent decline.

Gartner says that all four major segments of IT spending will experience declines—hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications.

"While the global economic downturn shows signs of easing, this year IT budgets are still being cut and consumers will need a lot more persuading before they can feel confident enough to loosen their purse strings," says Richard Gordon, research vice president and head of global forecasting at Gartner, in a prepared statement.

Gordon goes on to say that Gartner’s revised forecast represents only minor downward revisions, noting that the forecasted decline in spending growth for hardware and software this year has almost stabilized.

"However, the full impact of the global recession on the IT services and telecommunications sectors is still emerging, and forecast growth in these areas has been further reduced significantly,” Gordon says. “Moreover, the rise in the value of the U.S. dollar against most currencies in recent months will have a material downward impact on 2009 IT spending growth."

Gartner says the computing hardware segment will show the steepest decline in 2009, with spending to fall by 16.3 percent. Software will fare the best, with a decrease in spending of only 1.6 percent.

IT services sales will fall by 5.6 percent and telecom will fall by 4.6 percent, according to Gartner.

Forrester also recently revised its forecast for total global sales of IT products and services downward, projecting a decline of 10.6 percent for 2009, compared with a previous forecast of just 3 percent.