But Andrew Bartels, Forrester principal analyst and vice president, insists the tech sector is not in as bad a shape as it was after the dotcom bust. Bartels was careful to not comment specifically on Gartner's findings, but explained that in 2001 Forrester saw a 6 percent decline in spending, followed by 11 percent in 2002, whereas when , it projected a 3.1 percent decrease in IT goods and services purchased by business and government, rather than its original estimation of a 1.6 percent increase.

[ Related: Forrester's Bartels first predicted we wouldn't see a repeat of the 2001-2002 bust in InfoWorld's "" ]

"IT is down, just not to the same degree. We see 2009 as worse than we thought it would be in December, but we don't see it getting worse than we're predicting now," Bartels said. "The difference is that the decline today is for two or three quarters, not the two to three years we saw in 2001 and 2002."

IDC, for its part, has re-forecast its spending projections down twice since July 2008, according to IDC Research Director Robert Mahowald, who also would not comment directly on Gartner's numbers or methodology.

Mahowald pointed out, however, that IDC re-examined 93 markets and found all those were headed downward in 2009 except three: managed telepresence, consumer broadband, and SaaS.