Gartner's U.S. dollar growth forecast for global IT spending in 2012 has been revised downward from 4.6% in the previous quarter to 3.7%. Faltering global economic growth, the eurozone crisis and the impact of Thailand's floods on hard-disc drive production have taken their toll on IT spending.

The computing hardware sector will see the sharpest slowdown in 2012 as the impact of HDD supply constraints on HDD and PC shipments in the first half of the year compound the cautious environment for hardware spending in general.

Through 2015, forecast long-term annual average growth in global IT spending has been reduced slightly to 5.0% compared with 5.4% in the previous quarter.