The middle of the year - a favorable period for forecasting, as the results of the first half already allow to make some conclusions, and the remainder of the year, become the forecast period. Gartner analysts have made a combined report describing the trends in the market of consumer electronic devices that will be observed in the current and next two year.
Let's start with the fact that the PC market recovery according to Gartner experts this year is not expected. For the first time since 2010 the cost of users for the purchase of units in dollar terms decreased, and the strengthening of the US dollar against the other currencies is one of the reasons for this phenomenon. In real terms, the number of electronic devices bought this year will increase by only 1.5% compared with the previous year, while another three months ago, Gartner experts were confident that growth will reach 2.8%. Western Europe, Russia and Japan in this regard suffer from the strengthening of the dollar the most, as consumers are not willing to buy electronics at the new prices.
In total for the year will be sold 2.454 billion Devices, 1.94 billion Have mobile phones and smartphones. PC market shrinks by 4.5% to 300 mln Pieces. The release of Windows 10 is unlikely to affect the demand, as the possibility of free transition to the new operating system will increase the operating life of existing devices. As a result, the impact of Windows 10 on the PC market will be felt not before 2016. A site DigiTimes believes that in the second half of this year, demand for laptops and convertible devices in connection with the release of Windows 10 will grow more than demand for smartphones. That is, the last segment of the market yield of Microsoft's operating system will affect a much lesser extent - at least for the reason that it is measured by the share of a few percent.
The market of compact notebooks and tablets, according to Gartner, this year shrinks by 5.3% to 214 million Products. The volume of the tablet market, alone, will be reduced by 5.9% to 214 mln Pieces. By next year, the average duration of operation of the tablet will increase to three years, as progress in the smartphone segment is moving much faster, and tablets have evolved much more slowly. In addition, the sizes smartphones already approached the compact plates, well ahead of them in functional saturation.
The mobile phone market for the year will grow only by 3.3%. China remains the locomotive segment, but the average sales price falls, which discourages some manufacturers. In addition, even in China smartphones bought almost all who wanted, and now sales can be maintained only by those who are updating smartphone. Manufacturers make sense to look at the capacious markets outside China, where the proportion of regular phones still great. For example, such market remains India, but soon it will become the second largest, ahead of the United States.