Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 05 | Page 18

TRENDING P eter Sondergaard, senior vice president and global head of research at Gartner, provided the latest outlook for the IT industry today to an audience of more than 600 CIOs and IT leaders at Gartner Symposium/ ITxpo, which is taking place here through March 3, that interconnections, relationships, and algorithms are defining the future of business. “We see positive IT growth and scenarios in the Middle East despite some level of economic uncertainty in world markets,” said Sondergaard. “The substantial industrial refocusing to generate new economic development beyond the oil industry, with deepening smart cities initiatives and adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT), is of utmost importance in this region. We are witnessing priorities for smart city governments in education, transportation, safety and health.” With devices representing close to 19% of total IT ME spending (see Table 1), tablets and PCs are showing good momentum in the forecast period. Tables and PC sales are forecast to reach nearly $8 billion in 2016, and surpass $10 billion in 2018. Mobile phone sales will grow from slightly above $30 billion in 2016 to nearly $37 billion in 2019. With IT services doubling software expenditures in 2016, business IT services will represent 84% of the total services segment; while in software, enterprise application software will present the largest growth rate in the forecast period. However, in actual spending dollars infrastructure software will lead. The data centre segment market is forec