JOIN US The world’s leading IT research and advisory company Gartner has significantly cut its IT services growth forecast for calendar year 2015 to 2.5 per cent from its earlier forecast of 4.1 per cent in June 2014.
The research firm also cut worldwide IT spending forecast to 2.4 per cent from 3.9 per cent earlier.
“The rising US dollar is chiefly responsible for the change — in constant currency terms the downward revision is only 0.1 per cent,” Gartner Vice-President (Research) John-David Lovelock said.
“Stripping out the impact of exchange rate movements, the corresponding constant-currency growth figure is 3.7 per cent, which compares with 3.8 per cent in the previous quarter's forecast,” Lovelock added.
Rajiv Mehta at IIFL believes that this revision in forecasts by Gartner is unlikely to have any impact on Indian IT companies. “I do not think that this guidance revision by Gartner is likely to have a serious impact on the Indian IT services industry and its forecast as the guidance by Gartner is for the global IT industry and not specific to India. Nasscom has guided for a 13-15 per cent growth for the Indian IT services industry in the current fiscal (FY15), and I expect the forecast to be in the range of 12-14 per cent for the next fiscal,” Mehta added.
Meanwhile, worldwide PC shipments grew 1 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014 according to Gartner. Worldwide PC shipments totalled 83.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2014, a 1 per cent increase from the fourth quarter of 2013, according to preliminary results by Gartner.
These results indicate a slow, but consistent improvement following more than two years of decline.