The financial fallout from the credit crunch is taking its toll on PC upgrades in businesses, with 12 per cent cancelled and many others delayed.
This is according to a survey from analyst Gartner, which found 43 per cent of polled IT professionals expect to cut spending on client hardware this year.
"Enterprise belt-tightening has had a tremendous impact on the client computing technology segment with 43 per cent of respondents expecting a decrease in spending on client computing hardware in 2009 compared with 2008," said Andrew Johnson, managing vice president at Gartner, in a statement.
Gartner has previously predicted a 3.7 per cent decline in overall IT spending, and said hardware would be hit the hardest, falling 14.9 per cent.
It's not all doom and gloom across the board, however. The vast majority of upgrades are going ahead as planned in India and China.
In addition, Gartner said insurance, media and consumer-focused business services companies were still investing in client computing, while telecoms, wholesale and construction firms were most likely to cut spending.
Financial services were surprisingly optimistic about client computing, with just one of the surveyed firms saying it was cancelling plans to invest in new desktops.
PC sales have been dropping ever since the economy started to turn.
