Smartphone shipments overtook personal computer shipment in 2011
PCMag, citing data from Canalysis, reports the smartphone shipments overtook personal computer shipment in 2011. Vendors shipped 488 million smartphones as compared with 415 million PCs, in 2011. Making the date more impressive is the fact that Canalysis counts tablets as PC's in its data.
Smartphones which used to be a niche product targeted at business users, has become a mass market product. Smartphone shipments in 2011 grew by 62.7 percent. PC shipments also grew in 2011, by 14.8 percent. The double didgit increase was due to 274.2 percent increase in tablet shipments in 2011.
PC users go mobile. Looking at the breakdown in PC shipments, the trend to mobile was clear. Of the 415 million PC's shipped, desktops accounted for desktops for 112.4 million units. Nearly, three fourths of PC shipments were comprised by notebooks (209.6 million units), tablets (63.2 million units), and netbooks (29.4 million units).
Smartphone market share. Of the 488 million smartphones, Android had the biggest chunk of the market with a 48.8 percent share. Apple's share of the smartphone market was 19.1 percent. The ageing Symbian OS accounted for 16.4 percent of the market. Microsoft and Nokia how to migrate this 16.4 percent to Windows Phone.
RIM's BlackBerry OS accounted for 10.5 percent of the market, Samsung bada accounted for 2.7 percent, Microsoft's Windows Phone was good for 1.4 , and all other smartphone operating systems made up 1.1 percent.
Smartphone dominance to continue. The PC market is a fairly mature market which can expect modest growth in the nest few years. With prices of desktops and laptops starting at about Php10,000 and very wide variety of options at twice the price. Significant growth in this may be achieved by lower cost tablets, with very decent options now showing up for 30%-40% lower than entry level PC prices.
The smartphone market is still in its growth stages and modest growth should see smartphones doubling PC shipments in the next 3-4 years.