PC, tablet and mobile phone shipments estimated to go up 4.2 percent in 2014

July 9, 2014

The research firm Gartner is predicting that the total number of PC, tablet and mobile phone shipments, including those of iPhones and iPads, will go up 4.2 percent worldwide in 2014, with traditional PC shipments starting to recover while tablets slow down.

Gartner believes that shipments of traditional PC desktop and notebook sales will total 276.22 million units in 2014, while shipments of what it calls "Ultramobiles" and "Premium" PCs will come to 32.25 million worldwide, for a total of 308.47 million PC units this year. That would be a contraction of 2.9 percent compared to a 9.5 percent shipment decline in 2013.

Tablets will see 256.3 million units shipped in 2014, according to Gartner, up 23.9 percent from 2013 but still a slower growth rate than in previous years. Mobile phones will see shipments of nearly 1.9 billion units this year, up 3.1 percent from 2013.

In terms of operating systems, devices that use Google's Android will dominate with 1.1 billion units. Microsoft's various versions of Windows, including Windows Phone, will be installed in 333 million devices in 2014. Apple's iOS and OS X will be installed on a total of 271 million devices in 2014, according to Gartner.

Do you think these predictions from Gartner will turn out to be accurate?

Source: Gartner