Worldwide device shipments including PCs, tablets and mobile phones are expected to grow 5.9% reaching 2.35 billion units in 2013, compared to the prior year, driven by sales in tablets, smartphones, and ultramobiles, while the PC shipments are expected to decrease, a Gartner report has suggested.
Global PC shipments are expected to grow by 10.6% to 305 million units in 2013, against the previous year, while the PC market including ultramobiles is expected to drop by 7.3%.
Tablet shipments are expected to increase by 67.9% to 202 million units, whereas the mobile phone market is anticipated to experience a growth of 4.3% to over 1.8 billion units.
Gartner research VP Carolina Milanesi said the consumers want anytime-anywhere computing that allows them to consume and create content with ease, share and access the content from a different portfolio of products.
The ultramobile devices, which include Chromebooks, thin and light clamshell designs, and slate and hybrid devices running Windows 8, are expected to have high demand driven by the upgrades of notebooks and tablets like the Apple iPad or Galaxy Tab10.1.
Analysts believe that tablets share in the market is expected to increase faster than expected as sales of the iPad Mini recorded 60%of the total iOS tablet sales in the first quarter of 2013.
Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal said that the increased availability of lower priced basic tablets along with the value add shifting to software rather than hardware will result in the lifetimes of premium tablets extending as they remain active in the household for longer.
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"We will also see consumer preferences split between basic tablets and ultramobile devices," Atwal said.
"With mobile phones, volume expectations for 2013 have been brought down as the life cycles lengthen as consumers wait for new models and lower prices to hit the market in the Fall and holiday season.
The challenge in the smartphone market is also that, as penetration moves more and more to the mass market, price points are lowering and in most cases so do margins."
Milanesi added: "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."
Additionally, the increase in the adoption of bring your own device (BYOD) is expected to give a boost to consumer-owned devices, which is expected to grow from 65% in 2013 to 72% in 2017.
