Worldwide IT spending will shrink 1.3 per cent this year to $3.66 trillion as the strength of the US dollar more than wipes out a rise in underlying demand, Gartner said on Thursday.

The research group was forecasting growth of 2.4 per cent a quarter ago before the recent rise in the value of the dollar put what it called a “currency shock” into the global IT market.

“This is not a crash, even if it looks like one,” John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner, said.

“Taking out the impact of exchange rate movements, the corresponding constant-currency growth figure is 3.1 per cent.”

Spending on devices like PCs, mobile phones, tablets and printers, was forecast to decline 1.2 per cent to $685 billion, it said, partly due to a slowdown in PC purchases in Western Europe, Russia and Japan, regions where the local currency has devalued against the dollar.

Reuters