The number of PC, tablet, and mobile phone shipments will grow nearly 6% this year to reach 2.35 billion units, the latest Gartner report highlights (via Fortune). Tablet shipments are expected to grow 67.9% to reach 202 million units, while the mobile phone market will grow 4.5%, with a volume of more than 1.8 billion units. While the shipment of mobile devices is on the rise, PCs are expected to see a 10.6% drop on a year-over-year basis.
“Consumers want anytime-anywhere computing that allows them to consume and create content with ease, but also share and access that content from a different portfolio of products. Mobility is paramount in both mature and emerging markets,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner.
Although the numbers show that Android is the market leader, overtaking iPad sales, Gartner points to an important factor: Android’s market is split across many tablet manufacturers, which makes Apple the top tablet vendor.
“Although the numbers seem to paint a clear picture of who the winner will be when it comes to operating systems (OS) in the device market (see Table 2), the reality is that today ecosystem owners are challenged in having the same relevance in all segments,” said Ms. Milanesi. “Apple is currently the more homogeneous presence across all device segments, while 90 percent of Android sales are currently in the mobile phone market and 85 percent of Microsoft sales are in the PC market.”
The market research firm says the market trend of dumping desktop computers in exchange for mobility brings benefits to all manufacturers, and predicts Apple to increase its global device shipments from less than 10% (iOS & Mac OS X combined) to over 14% in 2014.
