Global IT Spending To Hit $4.5 Trillion In 2022, Says Gartner

Corporate technology soothsayer Gartner is forecasting worldwide IT spending will hit $4.5tr in 2022, up 5.5 per cent from 2021.

The strongest growth is set to come from enterprise software, which the analyst firm expects to increase by 11.5 per cent in 2022 to reach a global spending level of £670bn. Growth has fallen slightly, though. In 2021 it was 13.6 per cent for this market segment. The increase was driven by infrastructure software spending, which outpaced application software spending.

The largest chunk of IT spending is set to remain communication services, which will reach £1.48tr next year, after modest growth of 2.1 per cent. The next largest category is IT services, which is set to grow by 8.9 per cent to reach $1.29tr over the next year, according to the analysts.

John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner, argued the overall slowing of growth in IT spending was down to organisations increasingly building new technologies and software, rather than buying and implementing them from vendors.

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"However, digital tech initiatives remain a top strategic business priority for companies as they continue to reinvent the future of work, focusing spending on making their infrastructure bulletproof and accommodating increasingly complex hybrid work for employees going into 2022," he said in a pre-canned statement.

Growth in spending on tech devices peaked in 2021 at 15.1 per cent during the COVID-driven home working boom. Hitting $820bn, this market is expected to increase by 2.3 per cent in 2021.

According to Gartner figures released in August, growth in public-sector IT spending is slightly outstripping that of the overall market. It forecast that governments the world over will splash more than half a trillion dollars on IT next year, a year-on-year growth of 6.5 per cent.

With increasing demand, users should expect price rises, according to fellow analyst firm Canalys. Steve Brazier, CEO at the market researcher-cum-consultancy, said: "Prices going up is good for us, it's good for the channel, it's good for the vendors, it's good for the semiconductor industry, it's not good for the end user but for the rest of us it is fantastic news." ®