Posted by Mike Sachoff

The continued decline of the global economy has led IDC to revise its forecast for worldwide IT spending in 2009.

The IDC Black Book now forecasts worldwide IT spending will grow by just 0.5 percent year-over-year in 2009 in constant currency, down form a November 2008 forecast of 2.6 percent growth.

The greatest impact will be felt in global hardware markets, where over all spending growth will be -3.6 percent this year, led by a step decline in outlays for servers, PCs and printers/MFPs.

In contrast, global spending on software and IT services are each expected to grow 3.4 percent in 2009, down from 4.6 percent and 3.7 percent growth respectively in the previous forecast. Worldwide IT spending in 2009 will be $1.44 trillion.

In the United States, IDC is now forecasting year-over-year growth of 0.1 percent in overall IT spending, down from the November forecast of 0.9 percent growth. Paralleling the global market, hardware will experience a sharp decline in spending with -7.4 percent growth wile software and IT services spending will grow by 4 percent and 3 percent respectively. U.S. IT spending will total nearly $491 billion in 2009.

“The revised forecast is very close to the downside scenario we developed in November, which was based on the lowest worldwide GDP growth since World War II,” said Stephen Minton, vice president, Worldwide Markets and Strategies at IDC.

“While the outlook for 2009 is now worse than we thought just three months ago, we still expect IT spending to recover somewhat in 2010 and gain momentum through the rest of the forecast period.”

About the Author: Mike is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.