April 1, 2025. Jastra Kranjec
Every year, consumers and businesses pour staggering amounts of money into IT devices- desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and printers. While annual spending has fluctuated since 2021, the past three years have seen steady growth, pushing the market toward a record- breaking USD 810 billion in 2025. This massive figure will push the total spending over the past decade to shocking highs.
According to data presented by Techgaged.com, the world has spent a jaw-dropping USD 8.5 trillion on IT devices in a decade, surpassing the combined economies of Germany and the United Kingdom.
If IT device spending were a country, it would be the third-largest economy in the world
The surging popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, IoT devices, and hybrid work models has fueled the need for high-performance devices, and this trend will only speed up in 2025.
According to the Gartner survey, global spending on IT devices hit USD 735 billion in 2024, or six percent more than the year before that. However, 2025 is set to witness an even bigger growth, with the annual spending surging by 10.3 percent to a record USD 810.2 billion. Moreover, this means 2025 will see the second-largest spending increase in a decade, trailing only the COVID-19- driven boom in 2021, when it soared by 15 percent.
Even the world’s wealthiest billionaires wouldn’t have enough to cover this bill, as USD 810 billion is more than the combined net worth of Elon Musk,
Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. But this shocking figure is just a fraction of the world’s total amount on IT devices over the past decade. With a record USD 810 billion in spending in 2025, the cumulative ten-year figure will hit a jaw- dropping USD 8.5 trillion.
To put this into perspective, If IT device spending were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest economy, following China and the United States. Also, the ten-year spending of USD 8.5 trillion outpaces three years’ worth of global defense budgets, and it is enough money to fund NASA for 85 years, with its annual budget being around USD 100 billion.
The world spends 25 percent more on IT devices annually than a decade ago
The Gartner data also revealed how much annual spending on IT devices has increased over the past ten years. Back in 2014, consumers and companies spent USD 646 billion on IT devices. The next three years saw similar annual spending before it hit over USD 700 billion for the first time in 2017. The next major leap came in 2021 when the pandemic fueled a massive surge in tech purchases, reaching over USD 808 billion that year. According to the latest Gartner forecast, with a projected USD 810 billion in 2025, the world is now spending 25 percent or USD 164 billion more on PCs, tablets, and smartphones per year than a decade ago. For context, that USD 164 billion increase is more than the entire GDP of a country like Kuwait and close to that of Ukraine. In other words, in just ten years, global IT device spending has grown larger than the entire GDP of a mid-sized economy.
Jastra is an experienced editor, writer, and PR specialist with a strong news, research, and report writing background. She has worked across various fields, including politics, economics, technology, crypto, and financial markets, bringing expertise from both journalism and public relations.
