Information Age Index July 2008
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Industry growth slows
In just three short months, the rate of revenue growth in the IT industry has dropped from a seven-year high to a 14-month low.
In June 2008, the Information Age Index, which tracks the growth of the world’s 200 largest IT companies, fell 1.5 percentage points to 10.1%, its lowest rate since April 2007. Earlier this year, the speed of growth in the industry was at its highest since the dot-com boom.
The drag seen on the global stage comes despite the continued success of some household names. Global consultancy Accenture’s third-quarter revenues of $6.5 billion were up 19% from the previous year, with Oracle’s quarterly revenue growth even more impressive – 24% to $7.2 billion.
Other success stories included document management software vendor Adobe, whose second-quarter revenues also grew by 19% to reach $886.9 million and mobile email device whiz-kid Research in Motion, which continued its phenomenal run with first-quarter revenues of $2.2 billion, a year-on-year growth rate of 107%.
There were no conspicuous losses nor any big-name companies losing money. So where did the drag come from? Deceleration of revenue growth is being shared across the many small and medium-sized vendors. This could be a result of market consolidation – IT spend is going to fewer vendors – combined with softening economic conditions.
The same could be said of the European index. The absence of any catastrophic revenue shortfalls among companies from the Continent is perhaps more worrying than the alternative, as it suggests a widespread and insidious downturn.
The Information Age Index measures the overall growth rate of the IT industry by tracking the financial results of the world’s most important publicly listed IT companies.
