International Data Corporation (IDC) recently released the 2025 V2 edition of IDC "Worldwide ICT Spending Guide: Enterprise and SMB by Industry." According to IDC data, the global ICT market's total investment scale will approach $5.9 trillion in 2025 and is expected to increase to $7.6 trillion by 2029, representing a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.0%.

**China ICT Market Spending Forecast Insights**

IDC predicts that China's ICT market size will approach $889.43 billion by 2029, with a five-year CAGR of 7.0%. The "national subsidy" policy has driven growth in consumer product shipment volumes, providing space for market upgrades.

**Market Overview**

From an enterprise perspective, China's enterprise ICT market size will be approximately $314.7 billion in 2025, growing 14.3% compared to 2024, continuing to exceed GDP growth rates. Starting from 2025, China's enterprise ICT market will grow at a CAGR of 12.2%, with the market size approaching $488.92 billion by 2029.

Artificial intelligence and computing power deployment have become core engines of market growth. The demand for computing power from generative artificial intelligence has become the primary factor driving ICT market growth. Hyperscale enterprises and other large IT buyers continue large-scale deployment of GPU servers, driving rapid growth in server market spending. IDC expects China's enterprise server and storage investment to achieve a five-year CAGR of 21.7% from 2024-2029.

With the explosion of inference scenarios, the performance shortcomings of domestic chips in cluster performance and ecosystem development have been somewhat mitigated, providing more market opportunities for domestic computing power development. The trend of AI technology penetrating more industries will drive the continued increase in GPU computing power's share in the public cloud IaaS market. IDC data shows China's IaaS spending growth five-year CAGR reaches 14.7%.

Regarding overseas expansion, overseas products and services are gradually upgrading from Cloud to Cloud+AI. Leading domestic cloud vendors are actively expanding overseas ecosystem cooperation networks and advancing global business deployment. More cloud service companies are accelerating their international market layout, actively exporting industry practices and supply chain integration experience accumulated in the domestic market.

**Technology Dimensions**

The "Worldwide ICT Spending Guide: Enterprise and SMB by Industry" provides 4-level market segmentation for technology dimensions, covering 5 major technology dimensions and 120 subdivided technology dimensions. The in-depth breakdown of technology dimensions helps clients better understand technology markets.

China's enterprise ICT market demonstrates broad development prospects across multiple fields including hardware, software, business services, IT services, and communication services. As an important foundation for digital transformation and ICT markets, hardware infrastructure supports end-users' informatization and intelligentization processes, with widespread applications across various industries and continued market demand growth. IDC data shows hardware market spending is the largest, with market spending expected to exceed $249.55 billion by 2029.

The accelerated deployment of generative artificial intelligence technology has prompted sustained enterprise user attention to software markets. Software's key role in intelligent decision-making, business automation, and data governance scenarios is increasingly prominent, driving continued growth in related application and technology R&D investment. IDC predicts enterprise software market spending will have the highest growth rate, with a five-year CAGR approaching 13.6%.

IT services play a full-chain, full-lifecycle supporting role in key areas including enterprise architecture optimization, system integration, cloud platform deployment and management, security system construction, and intelligent technology deployment. Their importance continues to rise in improving enterprise operational efficiency, ensuring information security, enhancing business resilience, and accelerating innovation development, becoming an indispensable core force driving enterprise digitalization.

**Industry Insights**

The software and information services industry remains a key area for ICT investment. The continued development of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data technologies drives growing enterprise demand for software and information services. Leading internet clients are strengthening computing power and large model R&D investment, further enhancing their contribution to market spending. IDC expects this industry's five-year CAGR to reach 22.9% starting from 2025, with overall investment scale approaching $150.65 billion by 2029.

The education industry's active exploration of AI applications is the core driver of its rapid market growth. At the policy level, the state and Ministry of Education have issued a series of documents around new educational infrastructure construction, "AI + higher education," and K-12 artificial intelligence education, with policy promotion effects continuously strengthening. In terms of demand, the advancement of K-12 smart teaching, national and regional education resource platform co-construction and sharing, and increased cloud resource expansion and AI procurement needs from universities and research institutions jointly drive rapid growth in the education industry market.

Affected by enterprise cost reduction and efficiency improvement, the wholesale and retail industry is accelerating its embrace of public cloud. The state has issued multiple subsidy policies promoting domestic demand, combined with rapid growth in new retail formats such as brand chains, food and pharmaceutical chains, and instant retail, driving wholesale and retail industry demand for public cloud and further promoting market potential release.

**Enterprise Size Insights**

In 2025, very large businesses (1000+ employees) remain the primary force in ICT spending, accounting for nearly 30% of investment share. AI applications and solutions create numerous market opportunities, with many concentrated in customized service areas. On one hand, large internet platform companies entering the market have diverted small and medium enterprise customers; on the other hand, leading SaaS vendors, while focusing on large clients, are being held back by extensive customization demands. Meanwhile, leading cloud vendors are turning to large client strategies, and although unit prices have increased, pressure from customization demands and losses from R&D expenses have also intensified.

IDC "Worldwide ICT Spending Guide: Enterprise and SMB by Industry" quantifies ICT technology-related market potential from a global perspective. Forecast data covers multiple dimensions including 9 global regions, 120 technologies, 27 industries, and 5 enterprise sizes. IDC hopes to provide users with development trend predictions for global markets over the next five years through the spending guide.

In the future, IDC "Worldwide ICT Spending Guide: Enterprise and SMB by Industry" will continue to iterate based on market dynamics, involving more technology submarkets and conducting market insights and research from more comprehensive perspectives. IDC "Spending Guide" is committed to providing data support for IT vendors, industry users, and investment/financial institutions in strategic planning, product R&D, IT spending, and investment planning. The "Spending Guide" series products focus on hot IT areas, predicting market size and growth rates from multiple dimensions to help vendors discover market potential; guide industry users in IT planning based on hot technologies and application scenarios; and help investment and financial institutions make better decisions by analyzing specific market development prospects.