Less than three months after cutting its 2020 enterprise blockchain spending forecasts following COVID-19, IDC has lowered the figure to $4.1 billion from $4.3 billion. It still represents more than 50% growth compared to 2019.
IDC says that COVID-19 “has accelerated interest and investment in digital transformation, which includes blockchain and distributed ledger technology,” said James Wester, research director IDC. That’s because supply chain weaknesses were exposed and blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) helps to improve visibility and efficiency in those chains.
The market intelligence firm says more than a quarter of that spending will be in the banking sector in cross border payments, trade finance and post trade, and transaction agreements.
The next biggest spender is the manufacturing sector, which will account for about a quarter of spending by leveraging blockchain for lot provenance and asset or goods management.
It’s not quite winner takes all, but three use cases will account for as much as a third of all spending. They are cross border payments, lot lineage, and trade finance / post trade settlement.
The fastest growth in spending will be in professional services, with the health sector also featuring strongly.
In terms of where the money goes, IT services and business services will make up approximately 70% of the blockchain spending.
Other recent IDC blockchain forecasts and surveys include:
- COVID-19 adjusted IDC blockchain forecast 2020 (June 2020)
- IDC European enterprise blockchain spending forecast (May 2020)
- IDC China enterprise blockchain spending forecast (Nov 2019)
- IDC enterprise blockchain spending forecast (Aug 2019)
- IDC: 44% of European health providers never heard of blockchain (June 2019)
- Thales, IDC research reveals extensive US government blockchain adoption (May 2019)
- IDC: Trade finance took biggest slice of 2018 APAC blockchain spending (April 2019)
- IDC forecasts rapid enterprise blockchain spending growth (March 2019)
- IDC predicts huge blockchain impact on digital transformation by 2021 (Nov 2018)
- IDC blockchain spending predictions overshadowed by startups (July 2018)