Gartner: IT Services Sales Inched Forward In 2004Gartner: IT Services Sales Inched Forward In 2004

Worldwide sales of IT services grew 6.7% in 2004 to $607.8 billion, research firm Gartner said Tuesday. Much of the year-over-year gain, however, was because of the relatively weak U.S. dollar. Excluding the dollar's dip, IT services sales grew just 2.2%, Gartner says.

IT services companies such as IBM, EDS, and Computer Sciences Corp. earn a substantial portion of their revenue in foreign markets where currencies have appreciated against the dollar over the past several quarters. Converting those sales back to U.S. currency creates an artificial gain if the dollar is in decline.

Also according to Gartner, IBM remained the world's top seller of IT services in 2004, with sales of $46.4 billion. EDS and Fujitsu placed second and third, respectively, with Hewlett-Packard, Accenture, and CSC rounding out the top six.

In terms of sales, Accenture gained the most, increasing its IT services revenue 16.4% to $14.1 billion. All of the top six vendors saw at least some sales growth, with the exception of EDS, whose sales remained flat at $20.6 billion. Market share remained virtually flat for most of the vendors, though Accenture's share increased 9% to 2.3% of the highly fragmented IT services market. EDS's market share fell about 5% to 3.4%. IBM held the largest share with 7.6%, up from 7.5% in 2003.