Combined global shipments of PCs, tablets and mobile phones will continue to grow, driven by a shift to lower-priced devices in nearly all categories, Gartner Inc said in a report.
The market research firm forecast global shipment growth of 7.48 percent to 2.49 billion units next year, based on its estimate of 2.32 billion units shipped this year.
Overall shipments this year should increase 4.5 percent from last year, even as the market for notebook and desktop PCs slides 8.4 percent to 321.7 million units, the report said.
The only bright spot in the notebook and desktop category this year should be the growth in shipments of Ultrabooks, which Gartner said would increase 90 percent from a year earlier to 18.6 million units.
“Although the preference is for dedicated devices, we see the opportunity for hybrid ultrabooks to marry the functionality of a PC and the form factor of the tablet,” Gartner research director Ranjit Atwal said.
“Users that have to balance work and play will find that the advantage of buying and carrying one device outweighs the compromise in the full experience that single devices can deliver,” Atwal added.
Global tablet sales for this year are forecast to rise by an annual 53.4 percent to 184 million units, the research firm said.
The increase from 120 million units last year is being driven by lower prices, form factor variety, cloud updates and consumers’ addiction to apps, the report said.
Premium tablets with 7-inch displays will face price declines because of increasing competition in the field, Gartner predicted.
Mobile phone shipments are forecast to grow 3.67 percent worldwide this year, it said.
The mobile phone market will continue to experience steady growth, but the days of high average selling prices are coming to an end, it said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by