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Samsung has been a dominant force in the smartphone industry, but the latest figures from IDC suggest the company has a strong foothold in the tablet and PC markets as well. Samsung barely edged out Apple with a 21.2 percent share of all smartphones, tablets, desktop and laptop computer sales worldwide in Q4 2012, according to estimates. Apple sits at 20.3 percent. Together to two industry giants account for nearly half of all mobile and personal computing devices across the globe.
Apple saw a pretty drastic increase from 15.7 percent share in Q3 of 2012 thanks to the release of the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. The impending launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 flagship is expected to help the Korean company maintain its marginal lead through the early half of 2013.
Overall, tablet sales are up while desktop and laptop shipments continue to decline, a sign that many are optiong to move on from traditional computing platforms in favor of portable devices capable of performing many of the same tasks.
I don’t think the decline in PC sales is all that much from smartphones and tablets. I don’t know anyone that has one, but not the other.
However, everyone I know is going longer and longer between upgrades. Why bother, when you don’t need newer computers for most all tasks?
I’m a hardcore gamer, and spent $7,000 to build my computer 6 years ago. It’s been slightly upgraded since, and I would kind of like to make a decent upgrade soon, but why? Crysis 1 still remains the single most demanding game overall. Newer games can take advantage of a few new techniques that were not available then, such as DX11 tessellation but the demand really hasn’t gone anywhere. My computer still runs modern games at max at 60+ FPS.
I still hold out some hope the newer consoles will help move things forward again, but so far they have been a huge disappointment. Our last hope is on the X-Box, else gaming could be stale for quite a lot longer.
With another resurgence in PC gaming, we will see vast leaps again in the PC hardware market which always has dramatic effects on various other sectors. Including smartphones. Think the improvement on smart phones is slowing down? That’s because they are catching up to PCs more and more. Being a vastly smaller form factor, they will never be able to equal PCs. So, the closer they get, the harder it becomes to make an improvement. Raise the ceiling of PCs, and you’ll also see smartphones leap to catch up.
Congrats to Apple for doing this well.
If apple polished a turd people would buy it for top dollar. What’s even worse is when techs buy apple products. How lasy can people be? Who wants to be locked in apples closed walled garden. Personally I believe apple undermines my intelligence as a tech.If it could successfully ban competitors products it will.
It isn’t innovating anything and it is killing innovation.