Gartner has revised its forecast for worldwide IT spending due to very soft demand for PCs. The outfit believes sales of traditional PCs will continue to lose steam in the second half of the year and there seems to be no end in sight.
The analyst firm estimates spending on IT will total $3.7 trillion this year, which is actually up two percent from last year, but it is still far short of 4.1 percent predicted earlier this year. A number of other factors are hurting demand. Big G said unfavourable exchange rates and constant currency growth in Western Europe are not helping, either.
Windows 8 and Haswell failed to jump start the PC market, Gartner notes , but there might be light at the end of the tunnel. New devices and new form factors are coming, but at this point it is very unlikely that a bunch of hybrids and touch-enabled Ultrabooks can turn the tide. They will help, but they won’t reverse the trend.
Although IT departments aren’t expected to go on a spending spree over the next six months, things could change in early 2014, as they get ready to phase out XP boxes in Q1 and early Q2. Despite that, there doesn’t appear to be much room for optimism this year.
Windows 8.1 will launch on a number of new devices, but nobody is expecting it to make much of an impact. Intel Haswell and AMD Richland chips are out and the first products are already shipping and they will soon be joined by low-voltage Atoms and AMD Jaguar based APUs. On top of that, new Ultrabooks and hybrids are coming, too.
However, businesses rarely go for Atoms and Jaguars and IT departments tend to view new form factors like hybrids and thin clamshells as unnecessary gimmicks, so most new products that will enter the fray this year will be consumer oriented.
