Before publishing my predictions for 2022, it’s time to appraise those made for this year – which was the second year badly affected by the pandemic. As always, I’ve marked each between 1 and 10 based on their accuracy.
| No. | My top 10 predictions | Score | Comment |
| 1 | The world market for IT and communications will fall 1% to $6.8 trillion | 3 | It will grow by 10% to $7.2b and would have grown more but for (mainly semiconductor) supply chain problems |
| 2 | ITC spending will grow most in China, shrink most in the UK | 3 | China (6% in local currency) was stronger – and the UK (3%) weaker – than most; the USA (+13%) saw the strongest large market |
| 3 | Software will be the only category to see growth | 6 | Hardware (+13%) had the highest growth, IT Service and Software (+12%) had the next largest |
| 4 | IaaS will grow most, Peripherals least | 5 | IaaS spending grew by 23%, peripherals by 8%; the largest growth was actually gaming consoles (30%) and the worst enterprise telecom services (-6%) |
| 5 | The rise of small business as an ITC buyer | 10 | Spending by small companies grew by more than large, medium companies or consumers |
| 6 | Taxation and recession will challenge the $10 billion supplier club | 3 | All of the companies making >$10b net profit in 2020 have made even more in 2021; The EU and other countries are looking to make taxes fairer at a national level |
| 7 | Governments and big business strengthen protection from (mutating) cyber crime | 8 | A number of stronger precautioins are being taken and a number of ‘strike backs’ against the criminals |
| 8 | Millions will stay working from home, even when the pandemic ends | 10 | Yes – despite many governments encouraging ‘back to the office’ campaigns, the pandemic continues to prevent it for many |
| 9 | 55 million gaming consoles will ship | 10 | 32m sold by Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo in the year to Sept; 4th quarter is booming |
| 10 | The ITC industry takes strides to counter global warming | 5 | Not really; various pledges are being made, but 2021 has seen no major initiatives by our industry |
At 63% accuracy this was the worse result of all the predictions I’ve made since setting up ITCandor; the reason… I significantly underestimated the huge success vaccination programs would have in speeding up economic recovery and mildly under-rated the extent to which the ITC industry has and is helping to connect people virtually when physical meetings are difficult. I’ll try to better this year!
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