Click here to receive your FREE subscription to Education Channel Partner

IDC: Worldwide IT Spending To Increase 0.5 Percent, Down from Previous Forecasts

By: Scott Bekker

2/26/2009

The Asia/Pacific region, excluding Japan, could do slightly better. IDC's new forecast pegs A/P growth at 1.4 percent, a decline from the 4 percent growth that IDC anticipated in November. IDC sees China and India still growing fast, but not at the double-digit or near-double-digit rates it had expected in November. The new forecasts are for 6.5 percent IT spending growth in China and 5.7 percent growth in India.

The brightest spots from a regional perspective are Latin America, where the projection is for 4 percent IT spending growth, and the Middle East and Africa, a region still anticipated to increase its IT spending by 8 percent.

Lowlights are Japan and Central and Eastern Europe. IDC's forecast for Japan now calls for a contraction in IT spending of 1.8 percent, a 2.8 percentage point downward swing from November. The Central and Eastern European region, meanwhile, is expected to have an IT spending growth rate of -7.5 percent.

Despite the steep drop in expectations for 2009, IDC Vice President Stephen Minton wrote that the firm sees some light at the end of the tunnel. "While the outlook for 2009 is now worse than we thought just three months ago, we still expect IT spending to recover somewhat in 2010 and gain momentum [in subsequent years]."


Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.