Worldwide PC spending will drop six percent

THE DEPARTMENT of crystal ball gazing and geomantic divination at market analysts Gartner Group is claiming that worldwide spending on IT is on track to drop by six percent this year.

After consulting the stars, the augerers at Gartner predict that IT industry sales will fall by six percent from 2008 to $3.2 trillion in 2009.

This is nearly twice as bad as it had predicted during the first quarter. After consulting its tea leaves then it was certain that 2009 IT spending would only decline by 3.8 per cent this year.

Richard Gordon, research vice president and head of global IT forecasting at Gartner said it would seem that global IT budgets are still being cut. Businesses will need a lot more persuading before they can feel confident enough to open their wallets again, he surmised.

While Gartner's earlier predictions for the hardware and software segments have shown signs of stability, its IT services and telecommunications predictions seem to be way off the mark at the moment, he said.

If this were all not bad enough, the rising US dollar is also having a negative impact on IT spending.

Computing hardware is expected to see the biggest drop in spending this year, at 16 per cent, while IT services and telecom spending are expected to fall 5.6 per cent and 4.6 per cent, respectively. Software spending growth is expected to slow by 1.6 per cent.

Last year there was only single-digit growth which we'd have thought would have meant for unsightly fingers. µ