It is astonishing how rapidly the core Information and Communication Techno-logy have achieved near ubiquity in most parts of the globe in the last eight to 10 years. The International Telecomm-unication Union’s stats show that by the end of CY11, there were 5.9 billion mobile subscriptions across the world, one billion plus mobile broadband subscriptions, and 0.6 billion fixed broadband connections.
ITU also provides an idea of the online activities of the 2.4 billion internet users. For instance, on a given day on social media, users upload 300 million photos to Facebook, watch 130 million hours of video on YouTube, and send 500 million tweets.
It is interesting to note that online activities on this scale are happening over multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets and personal computers. People seem to prefer one device over the other based on the task, situation or location. This multiple-device phenomenon, fueled by the growing adoption of Smart computing devices run on mobile broadband, is gaining momentum, with shifting device preferences.
Latest estimates by the International Data Corporation (IDC) – a US firm that specialises in ICT-related market intelligence and advisory services – show that the sales shipments of PCs, tablets, and smartphones crossed 300 million units in 3QCY12. Showing a remarkable growth of over 27 percent YoY, these shipments brought in a cumulative value of $140.4 billion for their vendors. The ongoing holiday season quarter is expected to boost sales in terminal weeks of the year.
Samsung decisively took the first spot again. While the Korean giant is showing stellar growth trends, it is Apple Inc. that’s extracting greater value from its shipments, courtesy its high-end products. IDC’s tracker shows that Apple’s PCs, tablets and smartphones raked in 34 billion dollars during the quarter, which translates into an average selling price of 744 dollars across these device categories – 310 dollars higher than Samsung’s.
IDC’s analysts forecast the annual shipments of these ‘smart connected devices’ to cross two billion units by 2016, which would translate into a value of nearly $800 billion. They also expect the average selling price across these devices to go down by as much as 30 percent – from $534 in 2011 to $378 in 2016 – due to substitution from expensive PCs to reasonably-priced tablets and smartphones.
The growth in the computing devices is to come from Smartphones whose annual sales are expected to nearly triple in 2016 from the 2011 level of a half a billion units. Technological upgradations in the mobile operating systems, innovation in hardware design and creative collaboration with the carriers are being heavily counted on.
With Smartphones leading the pack, the market share for PCs is expected to get halved between 2011 and 2016 – but there would still be volumetric growth, which is good. Availability and affordability of a variety of devices is said to be favourable for the ICT services to penetrate further globally.
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Top 5 Smart Connected Device Vendors (3QCY12)
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Market Shipments YoY
share change
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(%) (mn) (%)
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Samsung 21.8 66.1 97.5
Apple 15.1 45.8 38.3
Lenovo 7.0 21.1 60
HP 4.6 14 -20.5
Sony 3.6 11 25.4
Others 47.9 145.6 9.7
Total 100 303.6 27.1
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Source: IDC.
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