The industry association BITKOM predicts that the revenue created by German companies from software, hardware and IT services will increase by 2.4 percent to EUR 79.7 billion in 2015. This is said to come from the latest EITO (European Information Technology Observatory) figures, a project from Bitkom Research GmbH in collaboration with the market research institutes IDC and GfK.
According to the prediction, the software business is estimated to grow the most, at 5.5 percent, taking it up to EUR 20.2 billion. Revenue for IT services is also predicted to increase: by 3.0 percent, to EUR 37.4 billion. BITKOM suggests that big data and cloud computing, amongst other things, are driving this growth. According to a study from the Experton Group, in 2015 the business customer market for cloud solutions will grow by 39 percent to EUR 8.8 billion.
Things don’t look quite so promising for the hardware business. After an increase of 5.8 percent in 2014, which was primarily due to extra investments in desktop computers and laptops, this year the federal association is expecting a fall in revenue of 1.2 percent to EUR 22.1 billion. Revenue from desktop computers and laptops is even predicted to fall by around 10 percent.