A Weak Start To 2014 Economic Growth Leads To Slower Global Tech Market Growth

Halfway through 2014, the global tech market is still trying to get out of second gear, with projected local currency growth of 3.9% (3.3% in US dollars), not the third-gear growth of 5.5% we projected in January. With the US economy actually shrinking in Q1 2014, the US tech market will not be the pacesetter that we expected. Instead, Latin America and EEMEA (Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) will have the best growth, with Canada and Western Europe lagging. Customer-process technologies (which are at the heart of the business technology agenda) will attract the most demand, with a 9.6% rise. By category, software will grow fastest by 5.8% (in local currency terms), led by analytics and customer applications in general and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications in particular. IT consulting and implementation services will also rise, pulled by the higher software spending but lagging due to the reduced systems integration spending with SaaS. Spending on IT outsourcing, communications equipment, and computer will grow more slowly than the overall tech market.