Increasing spending on three segments – devices, enterprise software and IT services – likely to give major boost to IT spending levels in India in 2019
Information technology(IT) spending in India is projected to reach $89.2 billion in 2019, an increase of 6.7 percent from the estimated spending of $83.6 billion this year.
Analysts at research company Gartner, Inc. provided the latest IT trends and spending outlook for India during the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2018, November 13-16, in Goa.
Digital business transformation initiatives from both private and public organizations continues to drive IT spending in India.
In its latest forecast, the research firm predicted that, in particular, increasing spending on three segments – devices, enterprise software and IT services – will give major boost to IT spending levels in India in 2019.
Spending on PCs, tablets and mobile phones to see significant growth
“Spending on devices (PCs, tablets and mobile phones) is set to total $33 billion in 2019, a growth of 7.4 percent year over year,” said Ganesh Ramamoorthy, managing vice president at Gartner.
He pointed out that mobile phones are contributing to the growth in the segment, and their growth is led by the continued shift from feature phones to smartphones.
Further elaborating on the market growth, Ramamoorthy said that the increasing demand for quality mobile phones has led to the rising average selling price of mobile phones in India, positioning India as having the third-fastest device market growth — behind Indonesia and South Africa.
Enterprise software spending expected to reach $6.3 billion
An increased focus on providing a better customer experience is increasing spending on enterprise application software, according to John Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.
Lovelock continued, “The software as a service market is driving growth in almost all software segments in India, and the customer relationship management SaaS market in India is among the fastest growing in the world. Overall, enterprise software spending is forecast to amount to $6.3 billion and grow 12.9 percent in 2019.”
Spending on IT services likely to see highest growth
Spending on IT services is forecast to experience highest growth in 2019 with a 13.5 percent increase year over year. In this segment, both the business process outsourcing (BPO) and consulting segments are bolstering the growth of IT services spending in India.
The BPO segment is projected to reach $1.7 billion and is on pace to achieve 18.5 percent growth, the highest 2019 growth rate of the IT services segment. The consulting segment is ranked second, totaling $4 billion — a 15.9 percent increase in 2019.
Table 1. India IT Spending Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)
| Segments | 2017 Spending | 2017
Growth (%) |
2018 Spending | 2018
Growth (%) |
2019 Spending | 2019
Growth (%) |
| Communications Services | 30,419 | 7.0 | 29,970 | -1.5 | 30,585 | 2.1 |
| Datacenter Systems | 3,370 | 14.9 | 3,467 | 2.9 | 3,624 | 4.5 |
| Devices | 28,726 | 27.4 | 30,737 | 7.0 | 33,014 | 7.4 |
| Enterprise Software | 4,884 | 13 | 5,584 | 14.3 | 6,306 | 12.9 |
| IT Services | 12,611 | 16 | 13,840 | 9.7 | 15,706 | 13.5 |
| Overall IT | 80,010 | 15.8 | 83,599 | 4.5 | 89,235 | 6.7 |
Source: Gartner (November 2018)
Meanwhile, Partha Iyengar, research vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, highlighted that the IT buying pattern in India signals the increased use of cloud services by organizations.
He said, “Instead of buying their own servers, organizations are turning to the cloud. As organizations continue their digital transformation efforts, shifting to ‘pay for use’ will continue. This sets organizations up to deal with the sustained and rapid change that underscores digital business.”
