IDC: Connected Devices To Pass 1 Billion in 2012
This year should be the year that "smart connected devices," an IDC term for PCs, smartphones and media tablets, will pass 1 billion device shipments, the market research firm says.
In a table released this week, IDC projected that unit shipments for 2012 would hit 1.1 billion in 2012, including 660 million smartphones, 371 million PCs and 106 million media tablets.
Chart: Worldwide Smart Connected Device Shipments, 2010-2016 (Unit Millions)
Description: This data comes from IDC's WW Quarterly PC Tracker, WW Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, and WW Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker.
Tags: Tracker, mobile phones, tablets, forecast, PCs, devices, consumer, IDC ...
Author: IDC
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Overall shipments for 2011 were 916 million units, good for $489 billion in revenues. IDC predicts compound annual growth of 15.4 percent over the next five years to 1.84 billion units in 2016.
While PCs are expected to continue their growth, media tablets are expected to grow much faster. But IDC anticipates that smartphones will dominate the shipment figures, with that category alone accounting for a billion devices a year by 2015.
The prospects for the Windows PC? Diminished.
"The once-dominant Windows on x86 platform, consisting of PCs running the Windows operating system on any x86-compatible CPU, [will slip] from a leading 35.9% share in 2011 down to 25.1% in 2016," IDC said in a statement.
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Posted by Scott Bekker on March 29, 2012