IDC comes up with their new report from their Smart Connected Device Tracker that tracks the shipments of mobile phones, tablets, portable computers and desktops around the world. Apple seems to have almost plugged the gap between the market leader Samsung and itself with the device shipments. Samsung still leads the race with an overall share of 21.1% of devices shipped globally and Apple is just trailing behind with a share of 20.3% globally. Nevertheless, Apple still has a healthy lead by in revenue share with 307% of the revenue share compared to 20.4% for Samsung. IDC predicts a major shift in the mobile device segment for 2013 where it expects the sale of Tablet devices to outgrow sale of Desktops and Laptops by volume. Currently there are over a billion units shipped worldwide with an average value of $576 approximately per device out of which smartphones comprised of 378 million devices with a total revenue of $168 billion in 2012.
IDC expects the number of tablets to be sold by 2017 to triple that of current sales and smartphones to double that of current sales but desktops and laptops would almost stagnate and see no growth at all. Also, 2013 seems to a promising year for Tablets with over 190 million tablets expected to be sold with a growth rate of 48.7% this year and smartphones to reach 918 million with a growth rate of 27.2% this year. Most of the smartphone segment growth is being expected from the emerging markets where countries like China are expected to surpass US by a huge number by 2017.