Across all the countries of EMEA, spending on devices is expected to decline and to be the main contributor to an overall slowdown in IT spending in 2016. The segments that will contribute most to overall IT spending growth in 2017 are software and IT services.

"Spending on digitalization is on the rise in EMEA, and we’ll witness some leading organizations modernize their core IT systems and increase spend on software and services in particular, as part of their digital transformation," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.

Spending on data center systems, particularly servers, would normally grow when spending on software increases, but with the growing adoption of software as a service (SaaS) and other cloud offerings, data center spending will be more muted than usual.

While IT services will remain the largest segment in terms of spending, and will continue to grow in 2017 (by 4.1 percent), the devices and communications services segments are likely to decline for at least the next three years.

"Mobile phone adoption is nearly at a saturation point — almost all users who want a new phone already have one," said Mr. Lovelock. "The mobile phone market has therefore shifted to a replacement cycle, and mobile phone prices have reached a plateau. This compounds the problems of communications service providers, who are having to compete more directly on price, by providing more services for the same amount and offering discounts on existing plans."

Gartner forecasts the PC market in Western Europe to total 47.8 million units in 2016 and to decrease by 3 percent in 2017. Gartner expects PC prices in the U.K. to increase by less than 10 percent in 2017 as vendors look to "de-feature" their PCs to keep prices down and take advantage of the single-digit decline in PC component costs in 2016.

Smartphone sales in Western Europe will total 147 million units in 2016, a 1 percent increase from last year. Gartner projects smartphone sales to increase 4.7 percent in 2017. Gartner analysts also expect that in 2017 more players (mainly from China) will aggressively target the "affordable" premium range, as well as improve basic smartphones, helping overall smartphone replacement volumes in 2017.