Global IT investments break the six trillion dollar mark

Worldwide investments in information technology are expected to surpass the six trillion dollar market for the first time in 2026, according to the latest Gartner forecast. This corresponds to an increase of almost ten percent compared to 2025. For the current year, analysts now expect a ten percent boost to a good 5.5 trillion dollars. They are thus revising their forecast from July upwards by two percentage points.

"The uncertainty that began in the second quarter of 2025 began to subside again in the third quarter. We expect a significant increase in budgets before the end of the year," explains market researcher John-David Lovelock, explaining why Gartner is more optimistic about developments again. Even if the hype around AI is subsiding a little, GenAI functions are now integrated into almost all software products that companies have in use. And these new functions will drive costs up. "Software is becoming more expensive, and GenAI is increasing prices for features and functionalities," Lovelock calculates.

Not all segments will benefit equally from the end of the July propagated restraint in investments. For example, the growth rate in the software sector in the new forecast for 2025 is only slightly above expectations in July. The reason given is that companies are still holding back, particularly when acquiring vertically oriented industry software or services. They are reacting more sensitively to political changes and economic uncertainties. Despite the acknowledged reservation in some areas, growth rates in the software market segment are above average at 11.9 percent and 15.2 percent.

Growth spurt through AI

The race among providers to build AI infrastructure means that Gartner has increased the already impressive growth rate in the data center sector by more than four percentage points. The market research firm had only recently forecast a doubling of investments in AI-specialized IaaS solutions. Overall, the data center systems market is expected to grow by almost 47 percent to 489 billion dollars this year. However, the growth in demand for servers in general and AI-optimized server racks in particular remains limited due to supply bottlenecks, says Lovelock. Perhaps for this reason, the growth rate is expected to fall to nineteen percent next year.

The forecast for the development of the end device market shows a significant improvement. Sales figures reported by vendors for mobile phones and PCs in the first half of the year suggest a comparatively strong increase of an expected 8.4 percent to 783 billion dollars in 2025 for the segment. According to Gartner, the driver behind the growth is higher-than-expected spending on mobile phones. The availability of AI-specialized smartphones and end devices is causing purchases to be brought forward. For 2026, a lower relative growth rate of 6.8 percent is therefore expected in the end device business.

All current figures can be found in the Gartner report.

(mki)