CIOIN

"Following strong fourth quarter sales, an unseasonably robust hardware supply chain in the first quarter of 2010, combined with continued improvement in the global economy, sets up 2010 for solid IT spending growth," said Richard Gordon, Research Vice President at Gartner. "However, it's important to note that nearly 4 percentage points of this growth will be the result of a projected decline in the value of the dollar relative to last year. IT spending in exchange-rate-adjusted dollars will still grow 1.6 percent this year, after declining 1.4 percent in 2009."

Worldwide computing hardware spending is forecast to reach $353 billion (about Rs. 15.8 lakh crores) in 2010, a 5.7 percent increase from 2009. Robust consumer spending on mobile PCs will drive hardware spending in 2010. Enterprise hardware spending will grow again in 2010, but it will remain below its 2008 level through 2014. Spending on storage will enjoy the fastest growth in terms of enterprise spending as the volume of enterprise data that needs to be stored continues to increase. Near-term spending on servers will be concentrated on lower-end servers; longer-term, server spending will be curtailed by virtualization, consolidation and, potentially, cloud computing.

"Computing hardware suffered the steepest spending decline of the four major IT spending category segments in 2009. However, it is now forecast to enjoy the joint strongest rebound in 2010," said George Shiffler, Research Director at Gartner. "Consumer PC spending will contribute nearly 4 percentage points of hardware spending growth in 2010, powered by strong consumer spending on mobile PCs. Additionally, professional PC spending will contribute just over 1 percentage point of spending growth in 2010 as organizations begin their migration to Windows 7 toward the end of the year."