Internet-related investments in Linux servers, PDAs, digital storage and new portable consumer products will be the highest growth areas in the global IT market in the next year, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The OECD's biennial IT Outlook report predicted the worldwide IT sector to grow at six percent in 2006, with growth fairly evenly-balanced across the world's industrialised nations.
The report said: "Overall the prospects for continuing balanced and sustained growth at a relatively high rate are good but a return to the unsustainable annual rates of 20 to 30 percent growth of the late 1990s is unlikely."
But the OECD warned that as many IT products increasingly become commodities, very rapid growth was confined to new and niche goods and services and to emerging geographical markets, and widespread restructuring was expected to continue in IT services, telecoms and digital content.
The report said: "Open source (the 'Linux effect'), online delivery of IT services (the 'Google effect') and new digital products are... disrupting how technology is developed and delivered."
It also singles out those technologies with the potential to have strong economic and social impacts in the near future, and highlights "ubiquitous networks" that make it possible to follow people and objects and provide real-time tracking, storing and processing of information.
These technologies include RFID and other sensor technologies and location-based services.
