IT spending in Western Europe will by 4% to $797 billion this year, according to analyst company Gartner’s latest predictions.
According to Gartner analyst Richard Gordon, government spending cuts across the region lay behind this decline. Governments make up roughly 20% of IT spend in Western Europe, he says, so any dip in their spending has a significant effect on the market as a whole.
"We’ve seen some significant public sector cuts right across the Eurozone," Gordon says. "And now we’re seeing the impact, three or four years after the recession."
However, Gartner expects Western European to return to growth in 2013. It predicts compound annual growth of 0.8% until to 2016, when the total IT spending will be reach $865 billion.
"We’re probably at the bottom in terms of government IT spending, I’d say, and you would hope that as things go forward,the private sector will pick up the slack," Gordon explains.
Emerging markets will account for 31% of the total global IT spend in 2012, Gartner found, with most of this growth being driven by Brazil, Mexico, China, India and Russia.
Gartner predicts that global IT spending will total $4 trillion in 2014, then grow 4% annually until its hits $4.5 trillion in 2016.
