Staff WritersGlobal forecasts for IT budgets show a healthy, but not robust increase for the 2006 year according to the latest IDC report.
Spending on technology should rise by 6.3 per cent in 2006, says IDC, no thanks to slight falls in the US market, the growth will come mainly from emerging markets in the Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) which will see a 9 per cent increase, led by double-digit spending gains in China (14%) and India (21%).
“Last year, the intensifying infrastructure upgrade cycle drove IT spending to its fastest rate of growth since Y2K,” said Stephen Minton, vice president of IDC Worldwide IT Markets. “Buyer activity really picked up in the second half of the year, contributing to improved margins and revenue for systems vendors and worldwide IT spending growth of 6.9% for 2005.”
“IDC expects the upgrade cycle to weaken somewhat, leading to slightly weaker overall growth in 2006,” said Juan Orozco, program manager, IT Markets and Strategies. “There will be greater momentum, however, in project-based spending and key application areas, including business intelligence and content management, as enterprises return to a focus on the front-end, strategic importance of technology.”
Software should see the largest growth (7%), while hardware and services are both expected to post overall growth of 6 per cent this year. The growth in global spending is only slightly less than experienced last year – a banner year since the Y2K boom times.
“The global economy will remain stable and robust, with marginal changes in growth compared to 2005,” added Anna Toncheva, program manager and economist, IT Markets and Strategies. “Although the engines of acceleration will rotate towards
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