With the global economy weakening, IDC announced its fifth consecutive downward revision of its 2023 global IT spending forecast. The company now predicts an overall growth rate of 4.4% in 2023, reaching $32.5 trillion, lower than last month’s prediction of 4.5% and October 2022’s prediction of 6%.
Due to sustained high inflation rates over the past year or so, central banks have responded by raising interest rates. Higher borrowing costs have put pressure on businesses to reduce their spending. As a result, the willingness to upgrade IT systems has decreased. Inflation has also weakened the demand for ordinary consumers to replace devices, with consumer IT spending expected to decline by 2% this year. This will be the second consecutive year that consumer technology spending has declined.
