Emerging markets continue to lead the way in tech spending, with the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries posting double-digit growth, research firm IDC's newly released Worldwide Black Book showed.

In US dollar terms, the IT industry grew by almost 9 percent in 2011, and IDC projects another year of 5 percent growth for worldwide IT spending in 2012. Strongest growth came from smartphones (+46 percent), software (+6 percent) and disk storage systems (+6 percent).

IDC sees Japan returning to positive growth, after the declines triggered by last year’s tsunami and earthquake disaster. IT spending in Brazil, Russia, India and China will be up by 9 percent, 11 percent, 16 percent and 15 percent, respectively.

In contrast, the macroeconomic crisis in Europe has had a severe impact on IT spending in the region. Overall IT investment was flat in 2011, with declines in spending on PCs, servers, storage, peripherals and enterprise network equipment. It is forecast to achieve less than 1 percent growth this year and 3 percent in 2013.

“Europe is going to be a long, drawn-out recovery,” said Anna Toncheva, program manager and economist in IDC's Global Technology and Industry Research Organization. “The debt crisis will take a long time to resolve, and there are numerous downside risks which could yet see the unraveling of the European single currency and, in the near term, an escalation of the crisis due to sovereign debt defaults in peripheral Eurozone countries.”

IDC's Worldwide Black Book provides forecasts for IT spending in 54 countries around the world. IT spending forecasts focus on 25 individual market segments across hardware, software, IT services, and telecom services for individual countries in all regions including North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.