The good news is that tech spending will be better than expected
this year. The bad news is that next year things will be worse than
originally predicted, said a new report released Tuesday by
Forrester Research.
Tech spending in 2008 will grow to $572 billion, up 5.4% from
2007. That's better than Forrester's original projections that tech
spending would inch up only 3.4% in 2008.
However, IT spending in 2009 will rise 6.1% to $606 billion.
That's better than 2008, but not nearly as robust as the 9.4%
growth in IT spending Forrester had projected for 2009 earlier this
year.
"There's been a delay of the pain," said Andrew Bartels, VP and
research analyst at Forrester Research. "Instead of the pain being
over and done by next year, it'll be prolonged into next year."
Forrester already had been working on its revised forecasts
before the latest bombshells from Wall Street this week. However,
the analyst firm moved up the release of its report in part because
of the news yesterday about the bankruptcy-court filing by
investment firm Lehman Brothers, the shotgun sale of Merrill Lynch
to Bank of America, and the resulting 504-point nosedive on the Dow
Jones industrial market.
Although the dire situation in the financial markets certainly
doesn't help bolster tech spending -- especially given that the
financial sector is one of the biggest buyers of tech products --
the decline in Forrester's IT spending projection for 2009 reflects
bigger-picture trends in the U.S. and global economy, Bartels said
in an interview with InformationWeek.
"There are a number of factors that helped growth of 2008 IT
spending, and those factors are gone now," he said. Factors that
helped propel IT spending in 2008 include the U.S. economic
stimulus checks that were mailed out in the spring, as well as the
weak U.S. dollar and strong U.S. exports. "Now the dollar has
improved a bit, but the export markets, especially Japan and
Canada, are slowing down," he said.
Also, U.S. government statistics show that U.S. consumer
spending is down, while the United States has been losing 50,000 to
80,000 jobs per month.
"The state of growth in the U.S. economy has the biggest impact
on the tech market," he said.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Dell reported a further softening in the
global IT market.