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Worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach US$3.4 trillion in 2010, a 5.3 percent increase from IT spending of US$3.2 trillion in 2009, according to research firm Gartner.

The IT industry will continue to show steady growth with IT spending in 2011 projected to surpass US$3.5 trillion, a 4.2% increase from 2010. In Asia Pacific, IT spending is forecast to reach US$549 billion, up 8.7% over 2009 levels.

'Unseasonably' strong hardware growth

Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner, said, "Following strong fourth quarter sales, an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010, combined with continued improvement in the global economy, sets up 2010 for solid IT spending growth." 

"However, it's important to note that nearly 4% of the global growth figure will be the result of a projected decline in the value of the dollar relative to last year. IT spending in exchange-rate-adjusted dollars will still grow 1.6 percent this year, after declining 1.4% in 2009," Gordon added.

Worldwide computing hardware spending is forecast to reach US$353 billion in 2010, a 5.7% increase from 2009. Robust consumer spending on mobile PCs will drive hardware spending in 2010. Enterprise hardware spending will grow again in 2010, but it will remain below its 2008 level through 2014.

Saving long-term hardware spending

Spending on storage will enjoy the fastest growth in terms of enterprise spending as the volume of enterprise data that needs to be stored continues to increase. Near-term spending on servers will be concentrated on lower-end servers; longer-term, server spending will be curtailed by virtualization, consolidation and, potentially, cloud computing.

"Computing hardware suffered the steepest spending decline of the four major IT spending category segments in 2009. However, it is now forecast to enjoy the joint strongest rebound in 2010," said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner. 

"Consumer PC spending will contribute nearly four percent of hardware spending growth in 2010, powered by strong consumer spending on mobile PCs. Additionally, professional PC spending will contribute just over one percentage point of spending growth in 2010 as organizations begin their migration to Windows 7 toward the end of the year," Shiffler added.

SaaS vendors continues to benefit

Worldwide software spending is expected to total US$232 billion in 2010, a 5.1% increase from last year. Gartner analysts said the impact of the recession on the software industry was tempered and not as dramatic as other IT markets. In 2010, the majority of enterprise software markets will see positive growth.

The infrastructure market, which includes all the software to build, run and manage an enterprise, is the largest segment in terms of revenue and the fastest-growing through the 2014. The hottest software segments through 2014 include virtualization, security, data integration/data quality and business intelligence.