ICT spending reaches $1.45 trillion, up 5.7% in 2015 in US

Venue 10 7000 Tablet
The information and communications technology (ICT) spending in the US grew 5.7 percent to $1.45 trillion in 2015 against 5.3 percent growth achieved in 2014.

All market segments will see declines in growth rate over the next five years, said Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA).

U.S. ICT spending is expected to achieve 4.8 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years, and reach $1.8 trillion in 2020.

U.S. ICT spending can be divided into 4 segments:

Pacesetting Markets including cloud computing, business Ethernet services, network virtualization, Internet of Things, intelligent transportation and more, are experiencing double-digit growth.

Turnaround Markets, which include backbone infrastructure equipment, smartphones, enterprise video conferencing and more, are changing directions or rapidly accelerating / deaccelerating.

Steady State Markets including cyber-security, robotics, health ICT, fixed broadband, data center construction and more, are experiencing single-digit growth.

Legacy Technologies and Services including circuit-switched landlines, enterprise voice systems, standard wireless handsets and more, are experiencing long-term declines.

Pacesetting Markets rose 19.5 percent, Turnaround Markets saw 10.6 percent growth and Steady State Markets grew 5.1 percent.

In 2020, Pacesetting Markets will grow at 11 percent and Turnaround Markets at 2.3 percent. For the next several years, growth in Steady State Markets will remain higher than it was in 2014 before declining to 3.5 percent in 2020.

Spending on cloud computing ($78.8 billion, up 16.7 percent in 2015) is far ahead of spending on all other technologies within the Pacesetting Markets segment.

Other technologies in the category are experiencing faster growth rates, led by network virtualization ($1.95 billion, up 46.6 percent in 2015), M2M ($15.5 billion, up 38 percent in 2015), and business Ethernet services ($6.6 billion, up 29.4 percent in 2015).

Between 2010 and 2015, U.S. smartphone spending increased three-fold, from $17.6 billion to $52.9 billion. However, with smartphone penetration now at 68 percent, the spending growth will slow considerably in the coming years – from 8.3 percent annual growth in 2015, to 1.2 percent in 2020.

IP VPN services is expected to grow 8.7 percent from 2015 to 2020, driven by the expansion of cloud computing services; and, cybersecurity is expected to grow 8.5 percent during that period, driven by rising attacks as more and more data is transmitted.