By: iPadfanzz staff on April 5, 2013
Gartner's latest data on PCs, tablets and smartphones — collectively known as combined worldwide devices — are expected to hit 2.4 billion units this year, a 9 per cent increase on the year before.
By 2017, the growth will reach the figure of 2.9 billion, but the mix, the firm pointed out, will shift “significantly” as consumers increasingly choose tablets over PCs.
It said the traditional PC market desktops and laptops is expected to decline 7.6 percent to 315 million units in 2013, and will keep in dropping over the next four years as the tablet market grows. The research firm expects the worldwide tablet shipments to be at 197 million units this year, a 69.8 percent increase from 2012 shipments of 116 million units.
The figures follow the line of IDC's latest figures, released just over a week ago. The rival research firm said that tablet shipments will vastly outnumber PCs and laptops this year, and portable PCs will take much of the brunt the following year.
"While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal computer and a tablet, especially those who use either or both for work and play, most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.
"As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis,” Milanesi added.
"Lower prices, form factor variety, cloud update and consumers' addiction to apps will be the key drivers in the tablet market," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner.
In comparison, while tablets, smartphones and ultramobile devices will grow by just shy of 70 percent to 197 million units in 2013, the traditional PC market — including desk-based machines and laptops — is expected to decline by 7.6 per cent.
It is definitely a concern for Microsoft as the overall shift towards mobile and ultramobile devices running Android is expected to outnumber Windows-based machines by nearly three times.
The figures also indicate that the shift towards tablets will happen also in emerging countries.
Google's Android will remain on top as an operating system, accounting for nearly 1.5 billion device shipments by 2017. Microsoft's Windows and Apple's portfolio of Mac and iOS devices will fight for the second spot, though Windows is expected to lead with 571 million units shipped in 2017 compared to 504 million for iOS and Mac.
