Gartner: European IT Spending To Recover In 2011

Europe will be the slowest region to emerge from the spending downturn, with Western Europe to record the EMEA region’s worst IT spending decline in 2010, according to new figures from Gartner.

IT spending for 2010 will drop by 3.3 percent in Western Europe and by 2.1 percent in EMEA, according to the study. However, IT spending across EMEA is due to rebound next year, reaching $795 billion (£493bn), a 1.3 percent increase over 2010, the study found.

European recovery

The EMEA recovery is expected to lag behind other regions, Gartner found. It will be the only region to show an IT spending decline in both 2009 and 2010, with enterprise IT spending expected to total $784.8bn in 2010, a decline of 2.1 percent from 2009.

“This decline in IT spending in 2010 is placing EMEA as the slowest region to fully overcome the downturn,” said Gartner analyst Peter Sondergaard, in a statement. “We expect Western Europe to record the worst decline in EMEA in 2010 (-3.3 percent), and experience the slowest long-term growth rate with a compound annual growth rate of 0.8 percent through 2014.”

The firm blamed the sluggish recovery on the debt crisis, which has triggered austerity measures in countries including the UK.

EMEA government IT spending will decline by 2.8 percent in 2010 to $139.6bn, Gartner said. It will grow slowly through 2014 as governments focus on bringing deficits under control. Further forward, the drop in the value of the Euro and the British pound is expected to promote healthy export growth, triggering positive economic growth.

Hardware spending up

For 2010, the computing hardware market is the only segment returning to growth in EMEA, rising 4.6 percent to $79.4bn, Gartner said.

“We are seeing a rise in shipments across hardware due to the low volumes in 2009 and from organisations gradually returning their replacement cycles to a normal length,” Sondergaard stated.

Gartner said storage was the least-affected hardware segment and has the best overall outlook through 2014. Servers, printers and PCs are suffering, however, as buyers migrate to lower-cost devices or configurations.