 Gartner has attributed the slower outlook to the rising US dollar, as well as “a modest reduction in growth expectations for devices, IT services and telecom services”.
“The change in forecast is less dramatic than it might at first seem – the rising US dollar is chiefly responsible for the change – in constant currency terms the downward revision is only 0.1 per cent,” commented John-David Lovelock, Gartner research vice president. “Stripping out the impact of exchange rate movements, the corresponding constant-currency growth figure is 3.7 per cent, which compares with 3.8 per cent in the previous quarter’s forecast.” Looking at individual market segments, Gartner states the smartphone market is becoming “polarised between the high and low-end market price points”, with growth in premium phones with an average selling price of US$478 in 2014 dominated by iOS. At the other end of the spectrum, growth in Android and other open operating system phones is in the basic phone segment, where in 2014 the average phone cost less than US$100, resulting in the market opportunity “becoming increasingly limited for mid-range smartphones”. Meanwhile, data centre systems spending is projected to reach US$143 billion in 2015, a 1.8 percent increase from 2014. Gartner states growth for the enterprise communications applications and enterprise network equipment segments of the market has been increased from the previous quarter’s forecast, while growth for the servers and external controller-based storage segments has been lowered. In the enterprise software market, spending is forecast to reach US$335 billion, a 5.5 per cent increase from 2014, while the outlook for IT services in 2015 has been reduced to 2.5 per cent growth, down from 4.1 per cent forecast in the previous quarter. Telecom services spending is projected to grow 0.7 per cent in 2015, with spending to reach US$1,638 trillion, with Gartner noting a multitude of positive and negative factors have affected each national market. |
