Toby Smith

Massive Breakdown in IT Spending

by Toby Smith   12/01/08

ChangeWave's latest corporate IT purchasing survey shows an accelerating collapse in U.S. business spending that has reached historic proportions, with record pullbacks occurring in the current quarter and going forward.

In one of the survey's few upbeat findings, the corporate smartphone market continues to show growth, with Research In Motion (RIMM) maintaining its huge lead, but Apple (AAPL) continuing to make inroads in small- to medium-sized businesses.

The survey was conducted Nov. 6-12, and 1,926 respondents involved with IT spending in their organization participated.

IT Spending Breakdown

The IT spending projections for first quarter of 2009 are abysmal -- the worst ever for a ChangeWave survey dating back to 2001.

An unprecedented 45% of respondents said their company's IT spending will decrease or there will be no spending at all in the first quarter -- 16 points worse than our previous survey.

Only 10% said spending will increase -- a three-point drop from the previous survey.

Most disturbingly, spending is plunging at a time of year when we normally see seasonal increases. This becomes immediately apparent when you look at the change from each November, beginning with November 2003, in the projected IT spending chart above.