Hasta La Gadget!

According the the IDC, smart connected devices surpassed 1 billion shipments in 2012, with around 1.2 billion devices being shipped worldwide. Smart connected devices shipments grew 29.1% year-over-year in 2012. Tablet shipments played a huge role in the shipments increase. There was a 78.4% year-over-year growth in tablet shipments last year, with over 128 million tablets being shipped out globally. The surge in tablet shipments is most likely due to the large amount of budget-friendly tablets available, like Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Tablets are also expected to continue their momentum this year, with an anticipated 48.7% year-over-year increase in sales. However, to steal tablet’s thunder, there was a huge amount of shipments worldwide for smartphones. Around 722 million smartphones were shipped worldwide last year. Smartphones saw a 46.1% year-over-year increase, and is expected to have a 27.2% year-over-year increase this year. Shipments of smartphones surpassed that of tablets, desktop PCs, and laptops combined.

Looking more into the smart connected device market, Apple’s shipments nearly caught up to Samsung’s shipments in 2012. In Q4 2012, Apple had a 20.3% unit shipment share, nearly catching up to Samsung’s 21.2% shipment share. However, in terms of revenue, Apple is still the leader, generating a 30.7% share of the quarter’s total revenue compared to Samsung’s 20.4%. All in all, there was a total of $168 billion in revenue generated in Q4.

While the mobile device market is doing extremely well, the computer market unfortunately is still doing horribly. In 2012, Desktop PCs saw a 4.1% year-over-year decrease in shipments, with only 148.4 million PCs shipped globally. It’s expected to continue down that downward slope with a 4.3% year-over-year decrease this year as well. Laptops had a 3.4% year-over-year decrease last year, with only 202 million units shipped worldwide. However, on the bright side, it’s expected to have a 0.9% year-over-year increase this year. If you think surpassing 1 billion shipments is impressive, in 2017, smart connected devices are expected to reach up to 2.25 billion shipments.

[via Business Wire]

IDC: Smart connected devices surpassed 1 billion device shipments in 2012 is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Researchers at IDC have had their ears to the ground keeping tabs on shipments for specific types of devices, and now they’ve painted a bigger picture of the hardware battlefield in 2012. “Smart connected devices” — a category which includes desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones — saw a total of 367.7 million units shipped in Q4 2012, up 28.3 percent from the year before. In total, over 1.2 billion units were shipped last year, marking a 29.1 percent upswing from 2011. Naturally, tablets and smartphones drove the boost by carving out roughly 60 percent of the year’s combined marketshare, while PCs and notebook shipments sank by 4.1 and 3.4 percent, respectively.

While Samsung and Apple each claimed crowns in specific gadget divisions, Sammy came out on top with smart connected devices in 2012 as a whole (and in Q4) thanks to a 20.8 percent marketshare, beating Cupertino by 2.6 percent. Lenovo finished in third place with a 6.5 percent slice, while HP and Dell trailed behind with 4.8 and 3.2 percent, respectively. IDC notes that Cook. and Co. could have come in a more distant second, but the debut of the iPhone 5 and iPad Mini pulled it out of a slump from earlier in the year.

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, Mobile, Apple, Samsung

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Source: IDC

IDC has released its the latest numbers that it has gathered about the smartphone industry, and they show that Android and iOS have captured a combined 91.1% mobile operating system market share. While we all knew that they both accounted for the large majority of the market, the number remind us how much of an uphill battle it is for competitors like Windows Phone, Blackberry, Ubuntu mobile, Firefox OS and Samsung’s Tizen. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Mysterious Nokia Lumia Device Spotted In Lumia 920 Ad, Google Launches Nexus 4 Store Locator,

Though Apple’s iPad lineup remains undeniably dominant in tablet PCs globally with a beastly 43.6% market share, IDC is showing that this Q4 2012 both Samsung and ASUS have bashed their previous records for sales to bits. Samsung’s Q4 shipments hit 7.9 million units in 2012 while one year before their quarter only hit 2.2 million – that’s a 263% jump in unit sales. ASUS also had a mighty jump with 402% more units sold this quarter compared to one year ago, with 3.1 million compared to just 600,000 in Q4 2011.

The IDC study showing worldwide tablet shipments show that the tablet industry in general is growing by leaps and bounds, with Amazon coming in at 6 million units sold and third on the list and Barnes & Noble being the only company in the top 5 to have had less of an impact on the market than it did Q4 one year ago. Taking all vendors into account, 52.5 million tablets were shown as shipped in Q4 2012, this showing a healthy 75.3% growth year over year.

It’s worth noting that the results the IDC shows are not exact, with some estimates coming before financial earnings reports are released officially. The data being distributed today is what the group calls “preliminary data” and is part of the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker for January 31, 2013. Another bit of information that may not be clear right out of the barrel is the fact that tablet sales include not just mobile operating systems like iOS and Android, but Windows RT and Windows 8 as well.

Barnes & Noble’s unit sales went down this quarter compared to one year ago, but their market share increased. ASUS’ market share went down through the number of tablets it sold went up over 400%. Wacky things are happening in this market right this minute, that’s for certain. Now we go about tracking how the tablet market is swallowing up the PC market and we really see some strange ideas.

According to d Tom Mainelli, research director, Tablets, at IDC, the PC market “saw shipments decline during the quarter for the first time in more than five years.” In contrast, as you can see above, tablets are very much on the rise with no end in sight (so to speak). Keep your eye to the analytics, folks, things are getting flatter by the quarter.

[via IDC]

IDC shows ASUS and Samsung skyrocketing in tablet sales is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week we’re having a bit of a double-take on the IDC’s release outlining the fourth quarter mobile device market share breakdown for the end of 2012, with none other than Huawei taking third place. This is absolutely surprising as all get-out as Huawei has never before cracked the top 5 smartphone vendors in the world – it’s only been inside the top 10 before now. Groups like LG, Motorola, and Nokia do not appear in the top 5 for smartphone sales in the quarter, while Nokia sits pretty in second place for total mobile phone “Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share” for 2012 (that includes non-smart phones).

According to the IDC, Huawei’s strategy including the high-end Ascend lineup which continues through 2013. IDC also notes that Huawei has “demonstrated its innovative skills” with such releases as the (at that time) world’s thinnest phone with the Ascend P1. The Ascend Mate is also on the way here in 2013 with the world’s first 6.1-inch smartphone display.

You’ll also find Samsung and Apple right up on top of the smartphone market this fourth quarter of 2012, as it was expected, with a 29% and 21.8% market share respectively. Compared to these numbers, the third place entrant (Huawei) brings on a tiny 4.9%, while Sony and ZTE come in fourth and fifth with 4.5% and 4.3% respectively, the all-encompassing “Others” category gathering up the rest with 35.5% of the market total. This is all accounted for with a total of 219.4 million smartphones sold over the fourth quarter of 2012 all around the world, a 36.4% jump from Q4 of 2011.

As for smartphone sales recorded over the entirety of 2012, Samsung and Apple once again reign supreme with 30.3% of the market and 19.1% of the market respectively. Third, fourth, and fifth place may be surprises to you, on the other hand: Nokia, HTC, and Research in Motion (RIM, BlackBerry). Of course it’s only with less than 15% of the market between the three of them that they exist on the list, less that one percentage point separating each of them, but there you have it – they’re still up there!

[via IDC]

Huawei shocks smartphone market with 3rd place finish in 2012: IDC is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.