With investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure increasing, a forecast has emerged that global information technology (IT) expenditure will grow more than 10% from a year earlier this year.
Market research firm Gartner said on the 9th that global IT expenditure will reach $6.15 trillion (about 8,961 trillion won), up 10.8% from a year earlier. Gartner predicted that expenditure will continue to rise across all categories, including data center systems (31.7%), devices (6.1%), software (14.7%), IT services (8.7%), and communication services (4.7).
John-David Lovelock, a chief analyst at Gartner, said, "Despite concerns about an AI bubble, expenditure is expanding across AI-related hardware and software, and AI infrastructure growth is still maintaining a rapid pace," adding, "Demand from hyperscalers (large cloud corporations) is continually driving increased investment in servers optimized for AI workloads."
In particular, data center systems expenditure is expected to surpass $650 billion, up 31.7% from $500 billion last year. Gartner explained, "This is largely due to server expenditure in this category increasing 36.9% from a year earlier."
Despite recent concerns over a "software doomsday theory" that rattled stock markets worldwide, software expenditure is also expected to continue double-digit growth this year. Gartner projected that software expenditure, including applications and infrastructure software, will exceed $1.4 trillion this year, up 14.7% from a year earlier.
Lovelock said, "This year's growth outlook for Generative AI model expenditure remains 80.8%," adding, "The share of Generative AI models in this year's software market will increase by 1.8 percentage points."
Expenditure related to devices is expected to rise 6.1% from a year earlier to $836 billion this year. Gartner analyzed that shipments of smartphones, PCs, and tablets are maintaining steady growth, but this year's growth rate will slow from a year earlier due to constrained market demand.
Lovelock said, "This slowdown is largely due to consumers' replacement demand for devices weakening as average selling prices rise with higher memory prices," adding, "Supply shortages are occurring in the low-end market with low profitability, limiting the growth in device shipment volumes."