The global spending on IT is expected to dip six percent to $3.2 trillion in 2009 from $3.4 trillion in the previous year, a report released here Tuesday said.

According to the forecast made by Gartner Inc, a leading global IT research and advisory company, the economic situation combined with the effect of exchange rate movements has resulted in continued weak IT spending.

'While the global economic downturn shows signs of easing, this year IT budgets are still being cut and consumers will need a lot more persuading before they can feel confident enough to loosen their purse strings,' said Richard Gordon, research vice president and head of global forecasting at Gartner.

'The forecast decline in spending growth for the hardware and software segments in 2009 has almost stabilised, and only minor downward revisions have been made to these forecasts this quarter,' Gordon said.

'However, the full impact of the global recession on the IT services and telecommunications sectors is still emerging, and forecast growth in these areas has been further reduced significantly.'

According to Gartner, the rise in the value of the US dollar against most currencies in recent months will have a material downward impact on the 2009 IT spending growth.

All four major segments of IT - hardware, software, IT services and telecommunications - will experience declining revenue, the study says.

The computing hardware segment will experience the steepest decline in 2009, with spending projected to decline 16.3 percent. The software segment will show the least decrease, with spending forecast to drop 1.6 percent.

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