China IT spending forecast to hit $351 billion

Spending on IT is projected to grow 6.73 percent year-on-year, reaching 2.13 trillion yuan ($351.88 billion) in 2014, global research firm Gartner Inc said.

The growth of China's IT spending is expected to outperform growth in the Asia-Pacific region, which is forecast to see an increase of 4.2 percent in IT expenditure in 2014.

Gartner said in a report on Tuesday that IT spending in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to hit $758 billion in 2014.

Global IT spending will total $3.8 trillion in 2014, growing slightly at 3.1 percent from the previous year. Spending on enterprise software will become the powerhouse that drives the growth of IT spending worldwide, according to Gartner.

"The investment is coming from exploiting analytics to make B2C processes more efficient and improve customer marketing efforts. Investment will also be aligned to B2B analytics, particularly in the SCM space, where annual spending is expected to grow 10.6 percent in 2014," said Richard Gordon, managing vice-president at Gartner.

"The focus is on enhancing the customer experience throughout the presales, sales and post sales processes," said Gordon, adding enterprise software spending will total $320 billion, growing 6.8 percent in 2014.

The growth of spending on devices, such as personal computers and mobile phones, is expected to pick up from 2013, reaching $697 billion, according to the report.