The number of tablets sold worldwide is C Level Executive List expected to reach 271 million units in 2014, according to Gartner. This is a solid growth of 39% compared to 2013.
Growth that will slow down
For tablets, growth is mainly occurring outside the United States, where Apple occupies a dominant position. In other countries, growth comes more from smaller, cheaper and unbranded tablets. For next year, in 2015, sales growth is expected to slow down but remain significant. There are expected to be 349 million tablets sold, a growth of 29% compared to 2014.
At the same time, sales of traditional PCs and laptops are expected to drop by around 7% in 2014, then by 5% in 2015. This decline, which is slowing down, means according to Gartner that users are stopping the movement to substitute the Laptop PC by tablet and better master the use of each type of terminal. Users are looking for smaller screens and better connectivity.
The majority of platforms under Android
In fact, at the same time, hybrid terminals, or with detachable screens, are experiencing strong growth of almost 80% with 37 million units sold in 2014. As for mobile phones, sales should amount to 1, 9 billion in 2014, a growth of 5%. Growth is coming from the “ high end ” and “ low end high end ,” according to Gartner.
In 2013, there was little compelling hardware innovation in mobile, Gartner believes. As for the PC market, only two thirds of the market for traditional PCs and laptop PCs are replaced. The majority of the remaining third evolves towards ultramobiles, and the rest is not replaced at all. On the operating system side, Android will occupy the top of the table in 2014 with 47% of platforms sold, compared to 13.7% for Windows (desktop and mobile PC) and 11.5% for the Apple world.