Worldwide devices spending to hit $666 bn in 2013: Gartner

Worldwide devices spending including PCs, tablets, mobile phones and printers would reach $666 billion in 2013, up 6.3% from 2012, forecasts Gartner. However, this is a significant reduction in the outlook for 2013 compared with Gartner's previous forecast of $706 billion in worldwide devices and 7.9% growth.

The long-term forecast for worldwide spending on devices has been reduced, with growth from 2012 through 2016 now expected to average 4.5% annually in current U.S. dollars (down from 6.4 %) and 5.1% annually in constant dollars (down from 7.4%). These reductions reflect a sharp reduction in the forecast growth in spending on PCs and tablets that is only partially offset by marginal increases in forecast growth in spending on mobile phones and printers, said Gartner.

"The tablet market has seen greater price competition from android devices as well as smaller, low-priced devices in emerging markets," Gordon said. "It is ultimately this shift toward relatively lower-priced tablets that lowers our average selling prices forecast for 2012 through 2016, which in turn is responsible for slowing device spending growth in general, and PC and tablet spending growth in particular," he added.

Worldwide enterprise software spending is forecast to total $296 billion in 2013, a 6.4 percent increase from 2012. This segment will be driven by key markets such as security, storage management and customer relationship management; however, beginning in 2014, markets aligned to big data and other information management initiatives, such as enterprise content management, data integration tools, and data quality tools will begin to see increased levels of investment.

The global telecom services market continues to be the largest IT spending market. Gartner analysts predict that growth will be predominately flat over the next several years as revenue from mobile data services compensates for the declines in total spending for both the fixed and mobile voice services markets. By 2016, Gartner forecasts that mobile data will represent 33 percent of the total telecom services market, up from 22 percent in 2012.