AI is no longer just a side project but a must-have for businesses to thrive. It is becoming the operating system for how companies compete, decide and grow, according to Gartner. By 2030, more than […]
AI is no longer just a side project but a must-have for businesses to thrive. It is becoming the operating system for how companies compete, decide and grow, according to Gartner. By 2030, more than […]
Global AI spending will reach US$2.52 trillion in 2026, with infrastructure accounting for the largest share of that outlay as enterprises move from pilot projects to large-scale operational deployments, according to Gartner The growth represents […]
AI PCs are projected to account for 31 percent of total worldwide PC market by the end of 2025, representing an estimated 77.8 million units shipped globally, according to Gartner. The estimation is a slight […]
The global generative AI (GenAI) market is set explosive growth, with predicted spending of US$644 billion in 2025, marking a staggering 76.4 percent increase from the previous year, according to Gartner. Despite challenges such as […]
Worldwide IT spending is expected to rise 9.8 percent to US$5.61 trillion in 2025, according to Gartner. Generative AI (GenAI) wil be a key driver pushing growth in segments such as data centre systems, devices […]
All the AI craze is spurring the growth of AI PCs. According to Gartner, global shipments of AI PCs are expected to hit 114 million units in 2025. That’s an increase of 165.5 percent from […]
The Asia-Pacific (APAC) PC market dipped 2.2 percent year-over-year in Q2, according to Gartner. This lesser decline compared to the past few quarters could be attributed to the weak China market, which offset the growth […]
Australian organisations are rapidly embracing public cloud services, with spending expected to soar to A$23.3 billion in 2024, up 19.7 percent from last year, according to Gartner. This cloud investment boom is fuelling innovation across […]
Growing consumer concern regarding the declining quality of social media platforms is expected to lead to 50 percent abandonment or reduction in usage by 2025, according to a Gartner survey. The survey findings point to […]
The Asia Pacific PC market dropped13 percent in year-over-year in Q3, according to Gartner. China fared worse with a steep 20 percent decline due to unemployment issues and spending cuts by the government. India’s Directorate […]
ChatGPT has gripped the attention of the world and according to Gartner, has prompted 45 percent of executives in a poll to up their artificial intelligence (AI) investments. In that poll of 2,500 business leaders, […]
Cybersecurity is a top concern for organisations in the digital age. Any lapse or breach of the enterprise network may result in loss of business, on top of reputation and customer confidence. It is not […]
From shortage to sluggishness, the semiconductor market experienced a roller coaster ride in 2022. According to Gartner, global semiconductor revenue inched up 1.1 percent in 2022 to reach US$601.7 billion. The combined revenue of the […]
Governments around the world are expected to increase IT spending to hit US$588.9 billion in 2023, an increase of 6.8 percent from 2022, according to Gartner. The increase is forecast to cover all segments except […]
From shortage to oversupply — how the semiconductor market has turned. Gartner expects global semiconductor market to shed 3.6 percent in 2023. In 2022, the market is on pace to grow four percent to reach […]
The Asia Pacific PC market dropped by 16.6 percent in Q3, compared to the same period last year, according to Gartner. Leading the dip is China experiencing slow shipments due to lockdowns which disrupted business […]
More companies turn to conversational AI for their customer support with spending expected by Gartner to hit about US$2 billion in 2022. The growth of the technology is predicted to reduce contact centre agent labor […]
Worldwide IT spending is expected to hit US$4.5 trillion in 2022, an increase of three percent from 2021, according Gartner. The pace of growth will be hindered by spending cutbacks on PCs, tablets and printers […]
Inflation. War. Supply chain challenges. All these will contribute to a projected decline of the global PC market by 9.5 percent in 2022. The current global climate is significantly impacting consumer demand the region, according […]
In a sign of economic recovery despite the ongoing pandemic, global IT spending is expected to hit US$4.5 trillion in 2022, up 5.1 percent from 2021, according to Gartner. There are high expectations that digital […]
Pandemic notwithstanding, artificial intelligence (AI) adoption continues to power ahead with global AI software market expected to grow 21.3 percent to US$62.5 billion in 2022. According to Gartner’s definition, this market covers applications with AI […]
Samsung regained its top spot in the global smartphone market in Q1, nudging Apple off the position it held a quarter ago, according to IDC. The Korea tech giant captured a 20.3 percent marketshare while […]
Amid the current chip shortage, Gartner has reported that the worldwide semiconductor revenue rose 10.4 percent to US$466.2 billion in 2020. Intel retained its pole position by revenue in 2020, followed by Samsung Electronics, SK […]
The worldwide social software and collaboration market is expected to reach US$4.5 billion in 2021, up 17.1 percent from 2020, according Gartner. Two key growth factors are the need to support remote work during COVID-19, […]
Despite a 14.6 percent year-on-year decline, Samsung maintained its pole position in the global smartphone market in 2020, according to Gartner. Apple sailed past Huawei to take the second spot with 3.3 percent annual growth. […]
Worldwide IT spending is expected to reach US$3.9 trillion in 2021, up 6.2 percent from 2020, according to Gartner. Enterprise software is expected to have the strongest rebound of 8.8 percent as remote work environments […]
The pandemic-struck datacentre market is expected to dip 10.3 percent this year but grow over the next four years, according to Gartner. The research firm projects end-user spending on global datacentre infrastructure to rise six […]

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In a surprising, yet not so surprising turn, the global PC market grew in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in Q2, when many countries went into various degrees of lockdown.
5G is expected to boost smartphone sale, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, in 2020. Greater China and emerging Asia-Pacific will retain the top two positions globally with respective sales of 432.3 million and 376.8 million smartphones this year, according to Gartner.
Despite a 0.7 percent drop in revenue, Intel climbed to the top of the global semiconductor market in 2019, according to Gartner.

The Honor Pro has helped Huawei grow in Q3.Amid a 0.4 percent contraction in the global smartphone market in Q3 compared to the corresponding quarter last year, Huawei continued to stride ahead with 26 percent growth. It has narrowed the gap with Samsung at the top while pulling away from Apple in third spot.
The signs are not good for smartphone sales as Gartner reports a 1.7 percent decline in Q2. Bucking the trend among the top five markets are China and Brazil. China clocked up 101 million smartphone sales, up 0.5 percent year on year in Q2, to maintain its top position.

It’s not going to be a good year for smartphones. The global market is expected to dip 2.5 percent year on year, with Japan leading with a 6.5 percent drop.

Unsurprisingly, a Gartner report is predicting that three quarters of all databases will reside in the cloud by 2022. Only five percent of migration will remain on premises.
Cloud services are really hot with projected growth of 17.5 percent to US$214.3 billion in 2019, according to Gartner. The momentum is expected to continue through to 2022 with the research firm projecting the market size and growth of the cloud services industry at nearly three time the growth of overall IT services.
Worldwide shipment of wearable devices will touch 225 million in 2019, an increase of 25.8 percent from 2018, according to Gartner.
While the world waits in anticipation for its arrival, 5G has been identified as vital for autonomous vehicle connectivity.

Dell EMC turned in a stellar performance in Q1 by growing 51.4 percent in server revenue, enabling it to widen the gap with second-place Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) which nevertheless grew an impressive 21.5 percent.

China smartphone makers Huawei and Xiaomi grew strongest as the market recovered in Q1, according to Gartner.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise with global business value expected to hit US$1.2 trillion in 2018, an increase of 70 percent from 2017, according to Gartner.

The downward trend continues for worldwide PC shipment with a 1.4 percent drop in Q1, making it the 14th consecutive quarter of decline, according to Gartner.
For the past few years, data scientists are highly sought after to analyse data that can help organisations better understand their business, customers and trends. But, it looks like artificial intelligence-based solutions may be taking over that role in the near future.
Global IT spending is expected to grow to US$3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 4.5 percent from 2017, according to Gartner.
One of the biggest fears amid the excitement about artificial intelligence (AI) is the loss of jobs. Many are afraid of being made redundant as AI becomes more pervasive.
The role of the CIO is changing, according to a Gartner survey of 3,160 CIO respondents in 98 countries.
The findings revealed that the CIO role is transitioning from delivery executive to business executive, from controlling cost and engineering processes, to driving revenue and exploiting data.
Ninety-five percent of CIOs expect their jobs to change or be remixed due to digitalisation. While world-class IT delivery management is a given, it will take up less and less of the CIO’s time.
With prominent ransomware attacks that affected many organisations, it is unsurprising that many are investing more in security products and services. According to Gartner, worldwide spending on information security products and services is expected to reach US$86.4 billion in 2017, an increase of 7 percent over 2016. This is expected to grow to US$93 billion in 2018.
Within the infrastructure protection segment, Gartner forecasts fast growth in the security testing market (albeit from a small base) due to continued data breaches and growing demands for application security testing as part of DevOps. Spending on emerging application security testing tools, particularly interactive application security testing, will contribute to the growth of this segment through 2021.
Security services will continue to be the fastest growing segment, especially IT outsourcing, consulting and implementation services. However, hardware support services will see growth slowing, due to the adoption of virtual appliances, public cloud and software as a service editions of security solutions, which reduces the need for attached hardware support overall.
Global semiconductor market is expected to grow 10.2 percent in 2017, to US$77.7 billion, according to Gartner.
This growth rate is up from the previous quarter’s forecast of 1.4 percent, due to continued aggressive investment in memory and leading-edge logic which is driving spending in wafer-level equipment.
“Spending momentum is more concentrated in 2017 mainly due to strong manufacturing demand in memory and leading-edge logic. The NAND flash shortage was more pronounced in the first quarter of 2017 than the previous forecast, leading to over 20 percent growth of etch and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) segments in 2017 with a strong capacity ramp-up for 3D NAND,” said Takashi Ogawa, Research Vice President of Gartner.
PC shipment in the Asia-Pacific region surpassed 21,5 million units, down 5.1 percent in Q2 compared to the same period last year, according to Gartner.
The dip was due to primarily due to market dynamics in India and China. In India, the pent up demand after the demonetisation cooled down after Q1, coupled with the absence of a large tender deal compared to a year ago and higher PC prices, brought about weak market growth. China was hugely impacted by the rise in PC prices due to the component shortage.
Overall, global PC shipment totaled 61.1 million units in Q2, a 4.3 percent decline from the same quarter last year.
Global demand for devices — PCs, tablets and smartphones — are expected to dip slightly this year, with Gartner projecting shipment exceeding 2.3 billion units, a decline of 0.3 percent from 2016.
However, the market is forecast to return to growth in 2018 with a 1.6 percent increase in shipment.
“Overall, the shipment growth of the device market is steady for the first time in many years. PC shipments are slightly lower while phone shipments are slightly higher — leading to a slight downward revision in shipments from the previous forecast, “said Ranjit Atwal, Research Director of Gartner.
Robots driven by artificial intelligence (AI) are replacing workers in various labour-intensive and service sectors but doctors, lawyers and even IT professionals are at risk of being made redundant. Or at least, certain aspects of each of these practices.
According to Gartner, smart machines and robots may replace highly trained professionals in tasks within medicine, law and IT by 2022 — that’s just five years more!
“The economics of AI and machine learning will lead to many tasks performed by professionals today becoming low-cost utilities. AI’s effects on different industries will force the enterprise to adjust its business strategy. Many competitive, high-margin industries will become more like utilities as AI turns complex work into a metered service that the enterprise pays for, like electricity,” said Stephen Prentice, Vice President and Gartner Fellow.
The growth of cloud and industrialised services and the decline of traditional data centre outsourcing (DCO) indicate a massive shift toward hybrid infrastructure services, according to Gartner.
In a report containing a series of predictions about IT infrastructure services, Gartner analysts said that by 2020, cloud, hosting and traditional infrastructure services will come in more or less at par in terms of spending.
“As the demand for agility and flexibility grows, organizations will shift toward more industrialised, less-tailored options. Organisations that adopt hybrid infrastructure will optimise costs and increase efficiency. However, it increases the complexity of selecting the right toolset to deliver end-to-end services in a multisourced environment,” said DD Mishra, Research Director of Gartner.
The public cloud services market in the mature Asia-Pacific (APAC) region — Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea — is forecast to grow 17.7 percent in 2017 to total US$10 billion, up from US$8.5 billion in 2016, according to Gartner.
By 2019, Gartner predicts that total public cloud services spending in these countries will rise to US$13.6 billion.
Public cloud services are shared, meterable, elastic and scalable multi-tenanted IT offerings delivered as a subscription-based service to external customers using internet technologies.
While the economic looks to be getting better in some instances, worldwide shipment of PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones are projected to remain flat in 2017.
According to Gartner, worldwide shipment for these devices are projected to total 2.3 billion in 2017, the same as 2016 estimates.
There were nearly seven billion phones, tablets and PCs in use in the world by the end of 2016. However, Gartner does not expect any growth in shipments of traditional devices until 2018, when a small increase in ultramobiles and mobile phone shipments is expected.
Advances in various technologies will drive users to interact with their smartphones in more intuitive ways, said Gartner. It expect that, by 2019, 20 percent of all user interactions with the smartphone will take place via virtual personal assistants (VPAs).
“The role of interactions will intensify through the growing popularity of VPAs among smartphone users and conversations made with smart machines,” said Annette Zimmermann, Research Director of Gartner.
Gartner’s annual mobile apps survey conducted in Q4 among 3,021 consumers across three countries (US, UK and China) found that 42 percent of respondents in the US and 32 percent in the UK used VPAs on their smartphones in the last three months. More than 37 percent of respondents (average across US and UK) used a VPA at least one or more times a day.
Worldwide combined shipments for devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) are expected to drop three percent in 2016, according to Gartner.
This will mark the second consecutive year of decline as the global devices market fell by 0.75 percent in 2015. And the immediate future remains bleak for this market.
“The global devices market is not on pace to return to single-digit growth soon,” said Ranjit Atwal, Research Director of Gartner.
Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is expected to slide 0.7 percent in 2016, to US$64.3 billion, according to Gartner. This is up from the estimated 2 percent decline in Gartner’s previous quarterly forecast.
“Economic instability, inventory excess, weak demand for PC’s, tablets, and mobile products in the past three years has caused slow growth for the semiconductor industry. This slowdown in electronic product demand has driven semiconductor device manufacturers to be conservative in increasing production,” said David Christensen, Senior Research Analyst of Gartner.
“Looking ahead, it appears the second half of 2016 may see improved demand. However, following Brexit, semiconductor inventory levels may rise in the third and fourth quarters, which could lead to reduced production volumes,” he added.
Worldwide security software revenue hit US$22.1 billion in 2015, a 3.7 percent increase in from 2014, according to Gartner.
Security information and event management (SIEM) remained the fastest-growing segment in 2015, with 15.8 percent growth, while consumer security software showed the sharpest decline at 5.9 percent year on year.
In 2015, the top five vendors together accounted for 37.6 percent of the security software revenue market share, down 3.1 percentage points from 2014. These vendors also displayed a collective decline of 4.2 percent in 2015, while the rest of the market (Others) grew strongly at 9.2 percent year on year.
Worldwide IT spending is forecast to be flat in 2016, totaling US$3.41 trillion, according to Gartner, Inc. This is up from last quarter’s forecast of negative 0.5 percent growth. The change in the forecast is mainly due to currency fluctuations.
“The current Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast assumes that the UK would not exit the European Union. With the UK’s exit, there will likely be an erosion in business confidence and price increases which will impact UK, Western Europe and worldwide IT spending,” said John-David Lovelock, Research Vice President of Gartner.
While the UK has embarked on a process to change, that change is yet to be defined. The “leave” vote will quickly affect IT spending in the UK and in Europe while other changes will take longer. Staff may be the largest immediate issue. The long-term uncertainty in work status will make the UK less attractive to new foreign workers. Retaining current non-UK staff and having less access to qualified new hires from abroad will impair UK IT Departments.
The public cloud services market in India is projected to grow 30.4 percent in 2016 to hit US$1.26 billion, according to Gartner.
The highest growth will come from cloud system infrastructure services (infrastructure as a service [IaaS]), which is projected to grow 32.5 percent in 2016, with platform as a service (PaaS) projected to grow 31.7 percent.
“We are witnessing a shift from legacy IT services to cloud-based services. Cloud services are growing due to organizations pursuing a digital business strategy,” said Sid Nag, Research Director of Gartner.
Despite a slowing global economy, CEOs are still making business growth their top priority in 2016, according to a Gartner survey. After growth (54 percent), the second and third business priorities are customers (31 percent) and workforce (27 percent).
The Gartner CEO and senior business executive survey of 400 senior business leaders in user organisations worldwide was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2015, asking questions about 2016/2017. Most responding organisations were those with annual revenue of US$1 billion or more. The survey results show that while business conditions are challenging, CEOs remain confident enough to sanction strategic investments, particularly when it comes to digital business transformation.
“The big rise of explicit mentions of the word ‘customer’ was very noticeable in the results of this year’s survey, “CEOs seem to be concerned about improving customer service, relationship and satisfaction levels. At the same time, CEOs have become much more concerned about employee issues than a couple of years ago. The emphasis is as much on benefits, retention and training of mainstream staff. It is not constrained only to senior grade ‘talent’ issues,” said Mark Raskino, Vice President and Gartner Fellow.