Global IT Spending Will Grow 6.2% in 2018

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 6.2 percent from 2017, according to the latest forecast by Gartner.

Enterprise software spending is forecast to experience the highest growth in 2018 with an 11.1 percent increase. Barring unexpected disruption, the software industry is expected to continue capitalizing on the evolution of digital business. Application software spending is expected to continue to rise through 2019, and infrastructure software will also continue to grow, bolstered by modernization initiatives.

Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)

Even with a strong end to 2017, worldwide spending on data center systems is forecast to grow 3.7 percent in 2018, down from 6.3 percent growth in 2017. The longer-term outlook continues to have challenges, particularly for the storage segment. The strength at the end of 2017 was primarily driven by the component shortage for memory components, and prices have increased at a greater rate than previously expected. Whereas previously, component shortages were expected to ease into 2018, the shortages are now expected to continue throughout the year with the supply not expected to ease until the end of the year.

Worldwide spending for devices (PCs, tablets and mobile phones) is forecast to grow in 2018, reaching $706 billion, an increase of 6.6 percent from 2017. Gartner's IT spending forecast methodology relies heavily on rigorous analysis of sales by thousands of vendors across the entire range of IT products and services. Gartner uses primary research techniques, complemented by secondary research sources, to build a comprehensive database of market size data on which to base its forecast.