The Investment in IT worldwide will rise in 2026as predicted by the consulting firm Gartner, 9.8% compared to 2025. This means that will exceed 6 trillion dollars for the first time in history, and will reach 6,080 million.
However, according to the company, not all segments of the technology market will experience this improvement in investment uniformly. Thus, within IT investment, growth in spending on software and services in 2025 has not recovered in the same way that devices and data center systems have.
The growth in investment in 2026 compared to 2025 will be greater in data center systems (19%) and software (15.2%), and more content in IT services (8.7%), devices (6.8%) and communications services (4.5%).
Sales data for smartphones and personal computers in the first half of 2025 confirmed by suppliers supports the device market growth forecast for this year. Investment in this area in 2025 will reach, according to forecasts, 783 billion dollars, 8.4% more than in 2024.
According to John David Lovelock, Vice President Analyst at Gartner«The pause of uncertainty that began in the second quarter of 2025 began to ease in the third quarter and a significant budget injection is expected before the end of the year. Despite being in the disillusionment phase in 2026, generative AI features are now ubiquitous in the software companies already own and use, and these features cost more money, which fits with this injection. The cost of software is increasing and, thanks to GenAI, so are the cost of features and functionality«.
Lovelock points out that growth in 2025 is mainly due to higher-than-expected investment in smartphones, and that “lThe availability of AI devices has also boosted total spending by more than $30 billion. Since the replacement cycle has not changed, the better performance in 2025 will lead to a lower relative growth rate by 2026, as demand has come forward. In other areas, such as data center systems, the race to build AI infrastructure has further increased demand and growth expectations for data center servers, especially AI-optimized server racks. However, server demand growth remains limited by supply constraints«.
