IT Spending: Gartner raises forecast again
Worldwide IT spending is expected to rise to $6.31 trillion in 2026. Gartner is revising its forecast upwards due to the AI boom.
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Worldwide IT spending is expected to climb to $6.31 trillion in 2026 – an increase of 13.5 percent compared to 2025. This is the conclusion of Gartner analysts in their latest market forecast, which once again revises their previous outlook upwards.
“The current forecast clearly shows how strong the dynamics around AI infrastructures and modern storage solutions have become,” comments Gartner analyst John-David Lovelock on the market development. With the growing number of AI workloads, investments in data centers are also increasing rapidly. This, in turn, is boosting demand for high-performance computers. At the same time, strong demand and supply bottlenecks are driving prices for high-bandwidth memory to record levels.
This makes the AI infrastructure business the most attractive growth segment. In particular, investments by hyperscalers and AI-focused software segments are expected to perform significantly better than traditional product categories.
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Data centers as growth drivers
According to the forecast, spending on data center systems will increase by 55.8 percent to $788 billion in 2026. For comparison: At the beginning of February, the expected growth spurt was more than twenty percentage points lower. Gartner has also revised the growth rates of the other sub-markets upwards, albeit to a much lesser extent. Software spending is expected to increase by 15.1 percent instead of 14.7 percent, and IT services by 9.0 percent instead of 8.7 percent.
Gartner now estimates the growth for PCs, smartphones & Co. at 8.2 percent, a good two percentage points higher than in February. On the one hand, higher storage costs are driving up average prices and market volume in this segment. On the other hand, they are dampening growth in the low-price device segment as customers postpone new purchases.
(mho)
