Lousy Economy Hits Home: IT Sales Growth To Slow To 1.6 Percent In 2009

The good news: The sales slowdown won't be as bad as in 2001 and 2002 following the dot-com crash, when IT purchases declined 15 to 20 percent, according to the report.

Forrester has steadily lowered its forecasts for IT sales in 2009, which the firm once predicted would grow 10 percent. "The recession is now likely to be deeper and longer than we had assumed as late as October 2008," analyst Andrew Bartels wrote in the report. The study assumes the recession, which began in December 2007, will last into mid-2009.

With just a couple of weeks remaining in 2008, Forrester projects that IT sales for this year will record growth of 4.1 percent compared to 2007. "The weakening of the U.S. tech market was already evident in the Q3 2008 data, which showed U.S. revenues of large [IT] vendors down by 2 percent," the market research company said.

Forrester predicts that investments in computer equipment, communications equipment and software by U.S. businesses will grow year-over-year by 3.4 percent in the current quarter, 0.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009 and decline by 1.1 percent in the second quarter. After bottoming out mid-year, IT sales will begin to grow again in the third quarter and accelerate late in 2009 and into 2010.

Forrester predicts that U.S. business and government purchases of computer equipment (including servers and PCs) will decline 3.1 percent in 2009, coming on top of a 0.4 percent decline this year. The exception will be storage systems, "where demand continues its inexorable rise," the report said.

Sales growth for communications equipment will slow to 0.8 percent in 2009, while software sales will grow 3.4 percent (most of that in maintenance and software fees with new license revenue flat or declining). Sales growth for IT consulting and integration services is expected to be 2.2 percent in 2009.

Forrester is forecasting 8 percent growth in IT sales in the U.S. in 2010.