According to figures released by Gartner, 2.4 billion IT devices (which includes PCs, smartphones and tablets) will be shipped in 2013, and that number will rise in 2014 up to 2.5 billion devices. One third of these devices are currently Android devices. Gartner says that as of next year, one half will be Android-based. PC shipments will be seeing a decline as more and more people use mobile devices as their primary means of computing.
Leading the rise in smartphone usage worldwide is the portability of smartphones and their ability to compute anywhere and everywhere. Another growing market in shipments is the ultra-mobile group, which features Chromebooks and other small portable computers. As this segment grows in popularity, it may eat into the share of tablets and smartphones, but it isn’t a solid market yet. Only 20 million devices shipped in 2013 will fall into the ultra-mobile category.
Another interesting note from Gartner is Android’s domination over the mobile market. Yet while there is a 50 percent share of the market for Android phones, the disparity between the different kinds of devices and the different versions they run give it very little unity. Apple, while having considerably less market share, has a lot more unity in their operating system with 93 percent of users using the most current version.
As far as device sales, Android will take a commanding lead. But on the software front, Apple may have an advantage by featuring apps that easily work across all of their devices.
Source: TechCrunch
