14 DAY TRIAL // Gartner had a nice, spiffy time combing through all the financial reports coming in from every company on the technological industry, so it was able to put together an idea of what 2013 means for it as a whole.
Well, “whole” might be a strong word, but when you take together the PC, tablet and mobile phone markets, you kind of need to use the word to convey a strong meaning.
Besides, as far as consumers go, this is the “whole” of the IT industry (not counting smart appliances).
Anyway, according to Gartner, cumulative shipments of PCs, tablets and phones will rise by 4.5% compared to 2012. That means the number of units will be 2.32 billion.
It's all thanks to lower-priced devices in all categories, although tablet shipments have had to make up for the drop in PC shipments.
Notebooks will reach 303 million units (11.2% decline), tablets will go up 53.4% (to 184 million) and phone shipments are nearing 1.8 billion (3.7% up).