Worldwide tech spending set to hit $3.7 trillion by end of 2013

Latest industry figures from Gartner show only 2% on 2012

James Vincent
Tuesday 02 July 2013 13:08 EDT
Comments
Apple has been criticised for shipping jobs abroad, to companies such as Foxconn in China
Apple has been criticised for shipping jobs abroad, to companies such as Foxconn in China (Reuters)

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

Industry analysts Gartner have predicted that the global spend on tech will hit $3.7 trillion by the end of this year.

 Amazingly, this figure represents a disappointment for the analysts – offering only a two per cent increase on 2012, instead of the 4.1 per cent growth that Gartner had originally predicted a few months earlier.

This figure covers everything from devices sold to services out-sourced; from MP3 players and printers, to cloud data and rented servers.

This is in part due to the slumped spending on devices. As Gartner have showed in earlier reports, the demand for PCs is tumbling – and although more tablets and smartphones are being sold than PCs are being lost, the margin is far less profitable on these.

The biggest single category in Gartner’s analysis is devoted to telecoms services. Services here including line rental, mobile bills and broadband services. Revenue from this area of the industry will only grow by 0.9% to $1.7 trillion, but this is an improvement on last year’s declining figure of -0.7%.

Enterprise software is another success story – referring to technology sold to businesses, governments and other organizations.  It’s a much smaller category than telecoms but is showing strong growth of 6.4% to $304 billion by the end of the year.

Gartner also explained that the downward revision of the growth figures was at least in part due to "exchange rate movements" and currency instability.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in