International Data Corporation (IDC) is maintaining its forecast for 2% growth in nominal dollar denominated revenue this year for worldwide IT and business services. This corresponds to a 5.7% growth rate if measures in constant currency.
IDC maitains the forecast even against the backdrop of a global recession. Worldwide GDP growth has worsened since March/April and is now expected to grow by only 2.7% this year and 2.4% in 2023, based on August's figures.
"While economic conditions for major economies around the world worsened in the last few months, given the services vendors' strong revenues, bookings, and other leading indicators, the worldwide services market will likely continue on its current growth trajectory," said Xiao-Fei Zhang, program director, IDC Worldwide Services Tracker program. "Also, the real threat to vendors may be from the supply side: with book-to-bill ratios above 1.1 or 1.15, attrition 25% plus, and utilization rate pushing close to 90%, something has to give. A cooler economy may actually help vendors to convert bookings to revenue faster by easing the labor market."
The 2022 market growth represents a slight increase of 12 basis points from IDC's April 2022 forecast. The five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is now projected to be 5.2%, compared to the previous forecast of 4.9%.
