Gartner: China's IT spending is expected to exceed US$550 million in 2022

According to Gartner's latest forecast, global IT spending is expected to reach US$4.4 trillion in 2022, a 4% increase from 2021. Among them, China's IT spending is expected to exceed US$550 million in 2022, an increase of 7.76% from 2021.

The impact of inflation on IT hardware (such as mobile devices and PCs) over the past two years has finally dissipated and begun to spread to software and services. Due to the current shortage of IT talent, technology service providers have to offer more competitive salaries and therefore raise prices, which will drive spending growth in these areas in 2022 and 2023. Software spending is expected to grow 9.8% in 2022 to $674.9 billion; IT services are expected to grow 6.8% to $1.3 trillion (see Table 1).

Table 1. Global IT spending forecast (Unit: million US dollars)

Source: Gartner (April 2022)

The recent and long-term growth of enterprise application software, infrastructure software and managed services indicates that digital transformation will not be a trend that will only last for one or two years, but will become a long-term, systemic trend. For example, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) supports all major consumer-centric online products and mobile applications, so almost all of the nearly 10% growth in software spending in 2022 will come from infrastructure as a service.

Gartner predicts that digital business initiatives such as experiential terminal consumption models and supply chain optimization will drive double-digit growth in spending in enterprise application and infrastructure software in 2023.

China's IT spending is expected to exceed US$550 million in 2022, an increase of 7.76% compared to 2021. Data center systems, IT services and software will achieve double-digit growth (see Table 2).

Source: Gartner (April 2022)

“CIOs will have the funding and organizational capacity they need to invest in critical technologies this year and next,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished research vice president at Gartner. “Some IT spending was put on hold in early 2022 due to the Omicron variant and subsequent waves of outbreaks, but is expected to resume in the short term.”

“For CIOs to fare better in the long term, they must pay close attention to key market signals, such as the shift from analog to digital business and from buying IT to building IT, and negotiate with their vendor partners about how to take on ongoing risk. To this extent, only the most vulnerable organizations will be forced to turn to cost-cutting approaches in 2022 and beyond.”