That's the conclusion of the Worldwide IT Spending Forecast, a report from analyst firm Gartner, which assumes the economy starts a tentative recovery by the end of 2009.
Gartner predicted worldwide IT spending in 2010 to be about $3.3 trillion, up about 3.3 percent over the estimated spending of $3.2 trillion in 2009. However, Gartner said, spending actually peaked in 2008 at $3.4 trillion.
The picture is slightly better in the U.S., where IT spending in 2010 is expected to rise to $958 billion, which is slightly above the previous peak of $957 billion reached in 2008 and well above the $932 billion spent in 2009.
On the hardware side, Jon Hardcastle, director of Gartner Research, estimated that total spending next year will be flat with 2009 at $317 billion. Flat, however, is better than the 16.5 percent fall in 2009 hardware spending compared to 2008.
The poor economic environment is leading customers to delay replacing such devices as professional PCs, copiers and multifunction printers, and x86-based servers. More specifically, Hardcastle estimated that customers will delay the purchase of 40 million desktop and 7 million mobile PCs in 2009.
Companies are also using such strategies as lengthening product life cycles, increasing the use of virtualization, consolidating devices and migrating from higher-cost platforms to cut costs, he wrote.
Worldwide spending on software, on the other hand, is expected to hit $231 billion in 2010, well above the $225 billion spent in 2008 and the $221 billion spent in 2009, wrote Joanne Correia, managing vice president of Gartner Research.
The growth in software is expected to come from customers looking to streamline their IT portfolios and optimize their IT infrastructure, Correia wrote. However, she wrote, sales of software tied to hardware such as PCs, servers and storage will be impacted by slow sales of those devices.
Worldwide telecom spending in 2010 should grow 3.2 percent over 2009 to reach $1.9 trillion, but will still be below the $2.0 trillion spent in the peak year of 2008, wrote Peter Kjeldsen, director of Gartner Research.
On the consumer side, customers are replacing mobile handsets less often than in the past, and are spending less per device than in the past, Kjeldsen wrote. Enterprise network equipment and communications spending depends on economic growth and employment, and so a rise in spending in these areas will take some time, he wrote.
Worldwide IT services spending is the main bright spot in the research. Kathryn Hale, vice president of Gartner Research, estimated that 2010 IT services spending will rise to $816 billion, up from $781 billion in 2009 and $809 billion in 2008.
Government spending as well as new regulations and governance structures are helping push an increase in IT services spending, Hale wrote. However, a move towards outsourcing services to control labor costs will put pressure on total services revenue, she wrote.