Worldwide IT spending is expected to increase to $3.8 trillion in 2014, a 3.1% increase from 2013, according to Garner’s latest forecast. The rate of growth between 2012 and 2013, by contrast, was a negligible 0.4 %.

Devices such as PCs, ultra-mobiles, mobile phones, and tablets are among the winning categories for 2014. Now predicted to grow by 4.3% this year, the device category contracted in 2013 by 1.2%.

Enterprise Software spending growth will be strong as well this year, which foresees the 2014 annual growth rate in that category rising by 6.8 percent, driven in part by strong demand for customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) applications.

“Investment is coming from exploiting analytics to make B2C processes more efficient and improve customer marketing efforts,” says Richard Gordon, managing vice president at Gartner. “Investment will also be aligned to B2B analytics, particularly in the SCM space, where annual spending is expected to grow 10.6 percent in 2014.”

Table 1. Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)

2013 2013 2014 2014
Spending Growth(%) Spending Growth(%)
Devices 669 -1.2 697 4.3
Enterprise Software 300 5.2 320 6.8
IT Services 922 1.8 963 4.5
Telecom Services 1,622 -0.5 1,653 1.2
Overall IT 3,663 0.4 3,777 3.1

Source Credit: Baseline and Gartner