The coronavirus outbreak has caused a global IT spending to slip 8% this year, with thousands of companies cutting their technology and service budgets and financing only essential IT costs.
Although the entire sector is forecast to shrink, IT devices and data center systems are set to witness the most significant drop in consumer spending this year.
The global spending on IT devices is forecast to plunge by $108-billion year-on-year, falling to $590-billion in 2020, according to data gathered by LearnBonds.
In 2012, consumers worldwide spent $676-billion on IT devices, including PCs, ultramobiles, tablets, mobile phones, and printers, revealed Statista and Gartner data. By the end of 2016, this value dropped to $630-billion. Over the next two years, global spending on IT devices rose to $712-billion, a six-year high.
Statistics show that, by the end of 2019, this value slightly decreased to $698-billion. However, the Covid-19 pandemic triggered an IT industry recession, with even the largest tech companies like America’s IBM and HP, or China’s Lenovo, witnessing falling sales and tumbling stock prices.
The Gartner data revealed that global consumer spending on IT devices is expected to plummet to $590-billion in 2020, down 15,5% in a year.
John-David Lovelock , vice-president of Gartner, says: “IT spending recovery will be slow through 2020, with the hardest hit industries, such as entertainment, air transport and heavy industry, taking over three years to come back to 2019 IT spending levels.”
Besides a significant decrease in the IT device consumer spending, statistics forecast a substantial fall in global computing industry revenue in 2020.
The market, which includes retail sales of laptops, tablets, desktop PCs, storage units, PC monitors, and keyboards, hit $278,9-billion in revenue last year. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, this value is expected to slump to $264,6-billion in 2020, a $14,3-billion drop in a year.
As the largest revenue stream of the entire market, laptops and tablets sales is forecast to decline by 9,7% year-on-year, falling from $171,6-billion in 2019 to $161,9-billion in 2020. Desktop PCs sales revenue is forecast to plunge by $1,6-billion year-on-year, while storage unit revenue is forecast to fall by $1,2-billion in 2020.
Statistics indicate that consumers worldwide are expected to reduce their spending on PC monitors and projectors by more than $1-billion this year. Keyboards and printers follow with $200-million, and $500-million drop in revenue, respectively.