JP Morgan has cut its forecast for business IT spending this year. 

In a report published this week, the investment bank downgraded its global IT spending growth forecast for 2013 from 1.2% to just 0.6%. 

The main reason for the revision is that businesses are likely to spend less on hardware than previously thought, according to the report's author Mark Moscowitz. 

In particular, spending on PCs will shrink faster than anticpated. JP Morgan now expects global PC spending to fall 8.3% this year, compared to its previous estimate of just 1.8%. 

The main reason for this is the uptake of mobile computing, Moscowitz wrote. He expects that spending on tablet devices will offset the decline in spending on PCs, as companies spend more on mobile devices.

“Meanwhile, our research indicates that server and storage spending are sluggish, due in part to server virtualisation adoption having peaked,” Moscowitz wrote. 

Cloud computing is another factor slowing hardware expenditure, Mosocowitz noted, although he added that ongoing demand for data centre capacity will provide a "backstop" for IT infrastructure investment. 

Nevertheless, JP Morgan expects that cloud computing market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) to grow 62% this year to reach $2.85 billion in revenue. 

“We expect companies like Google to become more aggressive in offering utility cloud-computing over time," Moscowitz added.