The latest Q4 2012 IDC report has been published. This one deals with “Smart Connected Devices” and in addition to giving a look at the fourth quarter also talks about the year as a whole. According to IDC, the Smart Connected Devices category consists of everything from smartphones and tablets to portable and desktop PCs. Needless to say, the PC side showed some decline and Samsung took top honors in terms of devices shipped for both Q4 and the year.
Looking the the smart connected devices category as a whole and we saw growth. In fact, the report is showing a total of 367.7 million devices being shipped in Q4, which is up 28.3 percent from the same quarter in the previous year. This increase comes despite the PC side declining a bit. The desktop market dropped 4.1 percent and the portable side dropped 3.4 percent. On that note, Ryan Reith, program manager, Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers at IDC has said that “smartphones and tablets are growing at a pace that PCs can’t realistically keep up.” The reasoning here, Reith believes this is because of “device prices and to some extent disposability.”
As mentioned earlier, Samsung took top honors with 250 million devices shipped for the year and 77.9 million devices shipped for the fourth quarter. This is a 119.3 percent increase for the year and an 86 percent increase for the quarter as compared to 2011. In terms of the fourth quarter; Samsung was followed by Apple with 74.8 million, Lenovo with 24.3 million, HP with 15.1 million and Sony with 11.1 million. Looking at the year as a whole and the top 5 is close to the Q4. The year as a whole had Samsung followed by Apple with 218.7 million, Lenovo with 78.3 million, HP with 58.2 million and Dell with 38.8 million.
Stepping back from the smart connected device category as a whole we have unit shipment numbers for the year. The report is showing smartphone shipments as 722.4 million, tablet shipments at 128.3 million, portable PCs at 202.0 million and desktop PCs at 148.4 million for a grand total of 1201.1 million for the year. Finally, for those curious, that is a 29.1 percent year-over-year increase which had 930.4 million shipments in 2011.
[via IDC]
