In the second half of 2018, global revenue from business and technology services earned $ 513B, reports International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Services Tracker.
With this result, revenue from Information Technology (IT) services exceeded one trillion dollars during 2018. This amount represents an annual growth of 4.3%, slightly higher than the growth of the Gross Domestic Product, calculated at 2.6% according to a preliminary analysis by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Project-oriented services, with higher growth
In terms of markets with higher growth, project-oriented services outperform other sectors, such as technical support and training. This sector, which includes consultancies, integrations and application development, grew by 6.4% in the second half of 2018 and earned revenues of $ 380B during the last year.
If we only focus on consulting companies, this sector grew by 8.3% in 2018, which meant $123B throughout the year.
The growth was similar in application development services, which grew by 7.5% in 2018. This sector has maintained its growth thanks to the fact that many companies and government agencies continue their path towards a digital transformation. They don’t only need new applications development, but also in the updating and improvement of existing applications.
The outsourcing services of application development are seen by companies as a way to modernize the apps they own through external providers. IDC predicts that this area will outperform other outsourcing segments.
Performance by region
In Latin America, more companies are trusting in the development potential of the region, where IT services increased in 2018. This favorable situation for the region is due to its rapid economic recovery, where the only exceptions are Venezuela and Argentina.
Central and Eastern Europe also had a rapid development, although it is still the smallest region in this sector. Most of its markets grew around 6% and 15%. The United States, the largest market worldwide, increased by 4.6% during 2018. Western Europe grew 3%, above what was predicted by IDC for 2018. The Asia / Pacific region (excluding Japan) increased by 5% as a whole.