Telecom equipment market to grow 6.9% in 2012: Gartner

Telecom Lead India: The worldwide telecom equipment market is likely to reach $472 billion in 2012, growing at a 6.9 percent from 2011, according to Gartner.

Telecom services will show constant growth with spending reaching $1.7 trillion in 2012, a 1 percent increase from 2011.

Growth in telecom equipment market will be complimented by continued health of the mobile devices market as well as a more positive outlook for enterprise network equipment, which is being driven by spending on application acceleration equipment, network security, WLAN and Ethernet switches.

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.7 trillion in 2012, a 2.5 percent increase from 2011. However, this is down from Gartner’s previous forecast of 3.7 percent growth for 2012.

Gartner analysts said the lower growth rate has more to do with the U.S. currency than an actual decline in spending. Gartner analysts said IT spending is on pace to increase 5.2 percent in 2012, up from its previous projection of 4.6 percent.

“Despite ongoing concerns about the global economic recovery – most notably around the resolution of eurozone sovereign-debt problems, worries about the potential for China’s real estate ‘bubble’ to spillover and affect the rest of the economy and rising oil prices – early signs in 2012 suggest that the global economic outlook has brightened a little,” said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. 

IT spending in the government sector is expected to contract moderately on a global basis in 2012 and 2013, driven by austerity measures in the eurozone.

In the small and midsize business market, which represents approximately a quarter of all enterprise IT spending, spending is forecast to reach $874 billion in 2012 and will grow to $1 trillion by 2016.

 Table 1. Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S.        Dollars)

                         Source: Gartner (April 2012)

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