Historic mark broken: more than 5 trillion dollars in IT investments in 2024

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The analysts at US market research firm Gartner are more optimistic about market developments than they were at the beginning of the year. According to their latest forecast, global IT spending is expected to increase by eight percent in 2024, surpassing the magical USD 5 trillion mark for the first time.

In January, the market researchers had forecast growth of just 6.8 percent. With the current forecast in mind, they see the development of global IT expenditure on track to pass the 8 trillion dollar mark before the end of the decade.

IT service providers at the forefront

The higher growth spurt will be triggered by the prospering software and service businesses, whose volumes are expected to increase at an above-average rate. In the software segment, Gartner expects an increase of 13.9 percent to 1.042 trillion dollars. For the IT service segment, the analysts anticipate an increase of 9.7% to almost 1.52 trillion dollars. Together, the two segments would thus account for more than half of all IT expenditure for the first time. Contrary to the forecast in January, the IT service business will not yet manage to overtake communication services as the largest submarket this year.

Forecast: Global IT Investments (Millions of US Dollars)
Segment	2023 Investments	2023 Growth (%)	2024 Investments	2024 Growth (%)
Data Centers	236179	4,0	259680	10,0
Devices	664028	-9,1	687943	3,6
Software	914689	12,6	1042174	13,9
IT Services	1385120	6,1	1519928	9,7
Communication Services	1487161	3,3	1551288	4,3
Total	4687177	3,8	5061013	8,0
Quelle: Gartner 04/2024

Regardless of this, Gartner analyst John-David Lovelock expects it to be replaced soon. In general, the market researcher characterizes the development of the IT service segment as "interesting". In his opinion, IT service providers are finding it easier to attract the urgently needed IT specialists compared to application companies. As a result, investments in consulting services are almost inevitably increasing. "We are therefore reaching a turning point this year: for the first time, more money is being spent on consulting than on internal staff," speculates Lovelock.

Viceroy data center

At ten percent, Gartner expects the second-highest leap in growth for the data center systems sector, whose volume is expected to climb to 260 billion dollars in 2024. This growth will be largely attributable to investments in the GenAI environment. In preparation for the hoped-for breakthrough with application companies in 2025, technology providers and service providers are currently spending a lot of money to equip products and services with GenAI functions. In the case of hyperscalers, for example, AI servers are already expected to account for almost sixty percent of all computer expenditure.

End device manufacturers can also take a somewhat more relaxed view of the current year. Compared to the low of 664 billion dollars in 2023, the market segment is forecast to improve by 3.6 percent to 688 billion dollars. Among other things, consumers and companies are now expected to replace cell phones faster than was recently the case. At this point, the integration of GenAI functions into premium and basic phones is more of an additional exchange incentive and less of an impetus for further growth.

Limited comparability

Note: The annual forecasts regularly published by Gartner are not necessarily directly comparable, as the starting point - in this case the initial data for 2023 - differs. For example, the April forecast for the data center system segment states growth of ten percent, which is 2.5 percentage points higher than the January forecast. In fact, the absolute volume is around 0.7 billion dollars below the previous forecast. The reason for this is the 2023 starting value, for which many estimates had to be used at the beginning of the year, and which is now being successively adjusted to the real results published by the manufacturers.

(mki)