Gartner: Device Shipments to Top 2.4 Billion This Year

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A new report from Gartner predicts that manufacturers will ship about 2.4 billion smartphones, tablets and PCs in 2013. Like IDC, Gartner forecasts that tablet shipments will soon outpace PC shipments, but Gartner doesn’t believe it will happen until 2015.

Computerworld’s Martyn Williams reported, “Almost 2.4 billion computers, tablets and cell phones will ship this year, according to estimates from Gartner. That’s a jump of 9% on 2012 and the industry has plenty more growth ahead. By 2017, Gartner expects just under 3 billion of the devices to ship.”

All Things D’s Arik Hesseldahl noted, “Growth will be led by tablets, which are expected to grow by 70 percent, to 467 million units. Phones will break the two-billion-unit mark in 2017, Gartner says. Traditional PCs, on the other hand, will decline by fewer than 300 million units by that year. Obviously, this is bad news for the PC players, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell, who are both struggling to get their PC divisions back on track, while at the same time trying to kick-start mobile device plays.”

The Guardian’s Charles Arthur added, “In a new forecast published on Thursday morning, Gartner says that by 2015 shipments of tablets will outstrip those of conventional PCs such as desktops and notebooks, as Android and Apple’s iOS become increasingly dominant in the overall operating system picture. Android in particular will be installed on more than a billion devices shipped in 2014, says Carolina Milanesi, the analyst who led the research.”

And eWeek quoted Gartner’s Carolina Milanesi, who said, “While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet, especially those who use either or both for work and play, most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device. As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis.”