Mumbai, Jan 28 (IANS): Global IT spending is projected to total $3.76 trillion in 2019, an increase of 3.2 per cent from 2018, a new report by market research firm Gartner said on Monday.

With the shift to cloud, a key driver of IT spending, enterprise software will continue to exhibit strong growth, with global software spending projected to grow 8.5 per cent in 2019.

It will grow another 8.2 per cent in 2020 to total $466 billion.

"Despite uncertainty fuelled by recession rumours, Brexit, trade wars and tariffs, the likely scenario for IT spending in 2019 is growth," John-David Lovelock, Research Vice President at Gartner, said in a statement.

"However, there are a lot of dynamic changes happening in regards to which segments will be driving growth in the future. Spending is moving from saturated segments such as mobile phones, PCs and on-premises data centre infrastructure to cloud services and Internet of Things (IoT) devices," Lovelock added.

Organisations are expected to increase spending on enterprise application software in 2019, with more of the budget shifting to Software as a Service (SaaS).

Despite a slowdown in the mobile phone market, the devices segment is expected to grow 1.6 per cent in 2019, noted the market research firm.

The largest and most highly-saturated smartphone markets, such as China, the US and Western Europe, are driven by replacement cycles.

With Samsung facing challenges bringing well-differentiated premium smartphones to market and Apple's high price-to-value benefits for its flagship smartphones, consumers kept their current phones and drove the mobile phone market down 1.2 per cent in 2018, the market research firm added.