Media Tablets Drive Worldwide IT Spending Up 5.6% in 2011: Gartner

Taipei, April 7, 2011 (CENS)--Global (information technology (IT) spending is forecast to total US$3.6 trillion in 2011, up 5.6% from US$3.4 trillion in 2010, according to the latest outlook by Gartner, Inc., which slightly raised its forecast for 2011 from its previous forecast of 5.1% growth.

Including the newly added product category--media tablets (or tablet PCs)--to its computing hardware spending estimates, Gartner has increased its computing hardware growth outlook from 7.5% to 9.5% for 2011. Worldwide media tablet spending is projected to reach US$29.4 billion in 2011, up from US$9.6 billion in 2010. Global spending on media tablets is forecast to increase at an annual average rate of 52% through 2015.

The addition of media tablets, reinforced by an expected additional decline in the value of the dollar, accounts for the increase in top-line growth,” said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. “Absent the addition of media tablets, the forecast would have slightly declined in constant-dollar terms; however, with their addition, there's virtually no change in underlying forecast growth at the level of overall IT.”

Gartner analysts said this stable forecast outlook comes despite political unrest in the Middle East, while the impact on IT markets of the recent natural disasters in Japan is yet to be fully understood.

The Middle Eastern share of global IT spending is approximately 2%, while the political unrest affecting many countries in the region may well dent IT spending levels, any impact would be insignificant at the global level, said an analyst at Gartner.

Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)
	2010 Spending	2010 Growth (%)	2011 Spending	2011 Growth (%)
Computing Hardware	374	12.3	409	9.5
Enterprise Software	237	6.7	255	7.6
IT Services	785	2.9	824	5.0
Telecom	2,011	5.5	2,110	4.9
All IT	3,406	5.7	3,598	5.6
Source: Gartner (March 2011)