It’s that time of year again…. actually it’s well past that time of year…. for me to be making predictions for the worldwide IT and communications market in 2024. 2023 proved to be a difficult year as the market continued to be affected by the global pandemic and Russia’s unjustified attack on the Ukraine, and made worse by Hamas’s grotesque terrorist attack on Israel and Israel’s devastating retaliations in Gaza. We dreamt of autonomous vehicles, only to be rudely awaked to the murderous reality of drones.
These are my predictions:
- The total ITC market will see zero spending growth, remaining level at $7.1 trillion
- ITC spending growth will be bigger in Asia Pacific; EMEA will perform better than the Americas
- Of the major country markets Japan will see the strongest spending growth in 2024
- Software spending growth will be stronger than in IT Services; Telecommunications and hardware sales will decline
- Sales by offering – Software as a Service spending will grow most; Implementation IT services will be the largest
- Spending on raw storage will begin to grow again, following two years of dramatic decline
- Generative AI – especially from large public cloud suppliers will continue to grow at tremendous rates
- Cyber criminals will continue to influence/interrupt/ disrupt national elections in the USA and UK
- Quantum computing will come of age, creating analytic breakthroughs in HPC
- War and terrorism will drive up oil prices, slow the move to green energy and negatively affect ITC supply chains