Hasta La Gadget!

According to the IDC (International Data Corporation)’s latest report on their Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, tablet computers are projected to overtake the mobile PC market by the end of this year. And more than that, the IDC suggests that tablet sales will grow past those of the entire PC market by the year 2015. If you’re a keyboard lover, this might be good news for you – cheap computers on the horizon!

Of course if you’re in the market for the highest-end PCs there are to grab, there may be a shrinking market that results in a desperate set of manufacturers. This could go several ways, one of which is cheaply constructed machines sold at tablet-level prices.

“Tablets surpassing portables in 2013, and total PCs in 2015, marks a significant change in consumer attitudes about compute devices and the applications and ecosystems that power them. IDC continues to believe that PCs will have an important role in this new era of computing, especially among business users.

But for many consumers, a tablet is a simple and elegant solution for core use cases that were previously addressed by the PC.” – Ryan Reith, Program Manager for IDC’s Mobility Trackers

According to the IDC, this quarter’s continued shift toward smaller screen sizes on tablets is a sign that the entire market is becoming more affordable. While back in 2011 it was the 8 – 11-inch tablet market that was dominating at 73%, tablets smaller than 8-inches are now creeping up at 55% of the total.

The IDC predicts that by 2017, tablets smaller than 8-inches will make up 57% of the market while tablets larger than 11-inches will be at 6%. That’s a tiny sum compared even to the still-large 37% of tablets at 8 – 11-inches, but there it is: the spread continues.

Results from the IDC note that tablet shipments are expected to grow 58.7% year-over-year in 2013, this number reaching 229.3 million units across the planet. This amount of unit sales is up from 144.5 million units sold through the entirety of 2012.

The Worldwide Average Selling Price (ASP) for tablets is expected by the IDC to decline this year to $381, that’s 10.8% below the ASP from 2012. The current ASP for a PC (that’s any PC, not just laptops, mind you) is $635.

Sound about right to you? How can the manufacturers sticking with PC form factors hope to compete against the tablet tides? Are you planning on sticking with your desktop or notebook computer, or does the tablet universe call to you?

SOURCE: IDC

IDC: tablets to overtake portable PCs by end of 2013 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Windows Phone has taken third place in the global smartphone OS shipments chart buoyed by Nokia’s Lumia successes, new figures suggest, pushing BlackBerry into fourth place, but Microsoft’s platform still languishes well behind Android and iOS. Google’s Android is the clear smartphone OS marketshare leader, according to IDC, with a claimed 75-percent of the market in Q1 2013, while Apple’s iOS has 17.3-percent.

That’s a 79.5-percent increase year-on-year for Android, while iOS managed a 6.6-percent climb from its share in Q1 2012. Microsoft saw the biggest increase, however, up 133.3-percent over the course of 12 months, to hold 3.2-percent globally.

BlackBerry OS, however, declined 35.1-percent year-on-year, down to 2.9-percent. There’s still a comfortable buffer over other platforms dwelling at the bottom of the barrel, but it suggests that BlackBerry 10 still has plenty of work to do if it’s to leverage the company back into the mainstream.

For Windows Phone, 7m units were supposedly shipped in the opening three months of this year. That’s predominantly down to Nokia devices; the Finnish company shipped 5.6m Lumia Windows Phones in the period, making it the most popular vendor for Microsoft’s mobile OS. Nokia’s expectations are high for Q2, too, with estimates of as many as 7m sales by some analysts.

In Android, Samsung dominates the segment, with 41.1-percent market share of smartphones overall. Earlier this week, Strategy Analytics estimated Samsung devices comprised 95-percent of Android smartphone sales.

“The intra-Android competition has not stifled companies from keeping Android as the cornerstone of their respective smartphone strategies,” IDC concludes, “but has upped the ante to innovate proprietary experiences.”

For Apple, it’s the company’s most impressive volume for iPhone sales, but IDC blames iOS stagnation for lower year-over-year growth than the market as a whole. That’s likely to change, it predicts, when iOS 7 debuts later in 2013.

Windows Phone comes 3rd in smartphones but Android keeps clear lead is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

IDC is the first of the big analyst companies to come out with quarterly mobile device shipment numbers that indicate Q1 as the first quarter where smartphones have outnumbered more basic feature phones in worldwide shipments: in a total market of 418.6 million devices, 216.2 (51.6%) were smartphones. But it is was a kind of tipping point of another sort, too: it is a sign of how Apple is not the juggernaut that it once was.

(BTW… for those of you keeping track, this is not the first quarter where Android has all but dominated the top-five rankings, save Apple’s presence. That happened in Q4 2012, according to IDC’s figures.)

Samsung shipped nearly 71 million smartphones in the quarter, giving it a market share of almost one-third of the whole of the smartphone sector (32.7%). Apple, meanwhile, shipped 37 million devices — just over half as many as Samsung, for a market share of 17.3%. With all others in the top-five — LG, Huawei and ZTE — still with less than 5% market share apiece, Samsung and Apple remain a strong top-two.

But looking at the pattern of growth something else comes out: Apple only grew its volumes by 6.6% over the same quarter a year ago. In fact, in that regard, that growth puts it far behind not only Samsung (at 60.7% volume growth), but also behind LG (110.2% growth); Huawei (94.1%); and ZTE (49.2%). As a point of comparison, Samsung and Apple were more nearly level a year ago, in Q1 2012, (44 million versus 35.1 million in Q1 2012), and respectively saw growth of 267% and 89% in shipment volumes — the only two that increased:

Today:

A year ago:

As we’ve pointed out before, shipments to those who sell devices are not the same thing as sales to users, but it is an important barometer for where the wider market is going. (The most recent figures from Kantar Worldpanel, which track sales, spell out how the difference between Android-based and Apple sales is not as wide as 2:1 in every market, but is in fact significantly wider in some.)

It’s notable that Nokia, BlackBerry, and HTC whose shipments were on the decline last year but still enough to keep them in the top-five, are now out of the picture altogether. It also shows that Nokia’s sub-10 million sales of smartphones, with 5.6 million Lumias, are not big enough figures to break out of the sizeable ‘others’ category.

With Apple still shipping more than three times as many devices as its next-closest competitor, LG, even if things continue as they are today, it will likely still be some time before it gets overtaken by the others in the list. Its performance also was enough to keep it in place as the world’s third-largest mobile handset maker overall, in a list otherwise dominated by companies that make both smartphones and feature phones:

IDC notes that LG, which shipped 10.3 million smartphones in the quarter, a rise of over 110% over the year before, was helped by three factors in the last quarter. The first of these was the popularity of the Nexus 4 device it created with Google; the second was the success of its lower-priced L Series (15 million sold in this category alone since launched); and the third was its LTE line. These three point to how those Android handset makers that can create strong enough and distinctive handsets that are set apart from the rest of the Android crowd can continue to pull away from the crowd.

Apple’s iPhone brand has never been seen as anything other than premium, and true to type, it is still not playing at the same level as others smartphone industry in creating new models that aim at the “cheap smartphone” market.

CEO Tim Cook did not discuss the prospect of a new, low-cost device, on Apple’s earnings call this week — the focus remains on selling older models, namely the iPhone 4, in markets like China as a route to bringing new smartphone users on to the platform. Other handset makers like Samsung, Nokia and many “others” are building out portfolios that hit not only at high-end users but those looking for entry devices priced at closer to $100 or even less. Some handset makers, specifically in emerging markets, are targeting only this market.

On the other hand Cook also left open the possibility that whatever comes next may be something different altogether: the “really great stuff” coming out in the autumn and in 2014 could be another iPhone. Equally, it could be something else altogether, and not a handset at all.

Image: Flickr

If reporting that the entirety of the PC market weren’t enough of a punch in the gut for Microsoft from the analytical group IDC, the suggestion that their newest operating system is to blame really, really is. What you’re about to witness is the continued downfall of the PC industry in the charts of the IDC, this most recent quarter’s report being much worse for ware than we’re sure any of the manufacturers listed would have liked. When your only job is to create PCs and you hoped Windows 8 was going to bring the industry into a shining light, you’re probably not too happy right about now.

As this most recent IDC Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker report shows, the first quarter of 2013 was not extremely kind to the likes of HP, Lenovo, Dell, Acer, ASUS, and the rest of the bunch. With a total average drop in PC shipments of 13.9%, it’s not appearing too positive for the near future in next-level PC production. That 13.9% drop is compared to the fourth quarter of 2012, while year-on-year the decline was a rather similar -12.7%.

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market.” – Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, Clients and Displays

You’ll find that Lenovo – good ol’ Lenovo – was the only vendor to have stayed flat from the quarter before this one to the one we’ve just completed. Their market share also went up a couple of percentage points while each of the other top-5 groups decreased by at least .2 points of a percentage – that’s Dell hanging in there as well. HP remains on top of the stack with a 15.7% share of the market but was hit hard with a 23.7% drop over the past year.

“While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button, and the costs associated with touch have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices. Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market.” – Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, Clients and Displays

According to the top 5 vendors chart of United States PC Shipments, Apple reaches in for a piece of the pie – as does Toshiba. Here we’ve still got HP up on top, Dell not far behind, and Apple butting heads with Toshiba and Lenovo. Here you’ll find Lenovo once again the only brand of the top five to not have lost market share over the past year with a 13% gain from Q1 of 2012 to Q1 of 2013.

Of course when you average the collection of the top 5 vendors of PCs in the United States, you still get a cool 11% drop this quarter compared to 2012′s Q1. Apple on its own also lost 7.5 points year-on-year in this market, still running strong with an estimated 1,418 units shipped in Q1 2013.

Have a peek at the timeline below for other recent IDC reports to see how the mobile and desktop PC universes are making their time here as we roll into the spring of 2013.

[via IDC]

PC market tumbles as IDC points at Windows 8 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If Windows 8 is the ticket to a bounce-back in PC sales, it’s going to be a long, slow recovery. At least, as long as you ask IDC. It estimates that worldwide computer shipments in the first quarter of 2013 fell 13.9 percent to 76.3 million, which is the steepest quarterly drop the research firm has recorded since it started tracking PCs back in 1994. While the exact factors at work aren’t clear, IDC blames it on a mix of customers spooked by Windows 8’s unfamiliar interface, the continued rise of mobile devices, and the decline of the netbook. This isn’t helped by the higher typical prices of touchscreen PCs, or by restructuring efforts at computing giants like Dell and HP.

Who’s reigning in this apparently declining PC empire, then? Worldwide, it’s a different picture than it was a few months ago: HP is back on top at 15.7 percent, followed by Lenovo, Dell, Acer and ASUS. The American climate is somewhat more familiar, with HP in front at 25.1 percent while being chased by Dell, Apple, Toshiba and Lenovo. With the exception of Lenovo, however, virtually all of the manufacturers involved saw at least some decline in their PC shipments. To IDC, that’s a sign that vendors and Microsoft need to find an antidote to the crazes for smartphones and tablets — and find it quickly.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, Apple, ASUS, HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo

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Source: IDC