Mid-Sized Markets Will See Strongest Growth as Smartphones Drive Device Sales to 2019

Medium-sized* and large** businesses will see the fastest growth in IT spending over the next three years with compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 4.4% and 4.8% respectively. According to the same report by IDC, over 40% of overall IT spending will come from organisations with more than 1,000 employees, while the small office category*** will generate around a quarter of all spending.  This leaves the mid-large categories with 35% of the market.

Hardware will remain the largest market segment overall with roughly 40% of spend going on devices, infrastructure, and telecoms hardware, including smartphones. The ‘telecoms’ category will represent more than half of all hardware spending, says IDC, while PCs will remain an important category of IT spending despite a five-year CAGR of -1.6%.

Spending on enterprise infrastructure will be driven by solid growth in the server and storage segments with CAGRs of 2.6% and 3.2%, respectively. Healthcare and telecommunication firms will represent the strongest opportunities here – and healthcare is expected to be the strongest vertical sector with a five-year CAGR of 5.5%.

Software will be the fastest-growing technology segment, at 6.7% CAGR, with the healthcare and financial services sectors investing most. Business services will grow at 6.2%, driven by media and resource industries.

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to grow to more than $2.8 trillion in 2019 – 14% higher than last year’s estimated $2.46 trillion. EMEA is expected to see a CAGR of 3.3% overall. The findings are published IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual IT Spending Guide: Vertical and Company Size report.

*100-499 employees

**500-999 employees

***1-9 employees