Australian IT spend will grow 4.2% in 2015

Australian IT spending is expected to grow 4.2% in 2015 to $78.7 billion, Gartner has forecast.

Local spending is on track to increase across every category - devices, software, services, telecom services and data centre systems.

Australians will spend an estimated $11.8 billion this year on devices including PCs, mobile phones, tablets and printers, up from $11.23 billion in 2014.

IT services spend is meanwhile set to grow to $28.86 billion from $28.05 billion over the same period. Telecom service spending is on track to grow 3.2% to $26.94 billion, while software sales will grow nearly 10% to $8.69 billion.

In New Zealand, total IT spending will increase an estimated 2.2% this year to NZ$11.4 billion ($11.2 billion), with only telecom service spending declining.

By contrast, Gartner is projecting that global IT spending will dip 1.3% in 2015 to US$3.66 trillion ($4.82 trillion).

“The recent rapid rise in the value of the US dollar against most currencies has put a currency shock into the global IT market,” Gartner Research Vice President John-David Lovelock said.

“Taking out the impact of exchange rate movements, the corresponding constant-currency growth figure is 3.1%, only off 0.6% from last quarter's update. Such are the illusions that large swings in the value of the dollar versus other currencies can create.”

Gartner forecasts that global device spending will fall 1.2% in US dollar terms for 2015, IT service spend will dip 0.7% and telecom service spending will shrink 2.6%.

But even with the higher dollar, enterprise software spending is on pace to grow 2.3% to US$320 billion. Data centre system sales are meanwhile due to increase 0.4% to US$142 billion.

Image courtesy of ben_osteen under CC