After a decline of 3% in 2017, worldwide shipments of devices \u2014 PCs, tablets and mobile phones \u2014 are forecast to return to growth (1.3%) in 2018 and will total 2.3 billion units, according to Gartner Inc.<\/p>\n
While the performance of shipments of devices fluctuate year over year, end-user device spending continues to rise and is forecast to increase 7% in 2018. “Driven by better specifications despite increasing costs ASPs for devices rose by 9.1% in 2017, and this trend will continue through this year, where we expect prices will increase by 5.6%,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner.<\/p>\n
Despite PC prices increasing 4.6% in 2018, PC market unit demand, driven by business buying, is stabilising through 2018 The traditional PC market will decline 3.9% in units in 2018, and is expected to decline a further 3.6% during 2019.<\/p>\n
Regional market recovering at different pace<\/strong><\/p>\n Economic upheaval has affected the demand for devices variably across regions. Argentina, Brazil, Japan and Russia collectively lost nearly 25% of their device shipments between 2013 and 2017. “While the rate of recovery is varied regionally, most of the device types are now showing growth across these countries,” said Atwal.<\/p>\n In countries suffering from significant economic turmoil the extended lifetimes across all device types tend to remain stagnant. “As a result, as markets recover, they will fail to reach the unit volumes previously seen and will only recover to around 70% of those shipments by 2022,” said Atwal.<\/p>\n Worldwide mobile phone lifetimes to increase through 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n Gartner forecasts that global mobile phone shipments will increase 1.6% in 2018, with total mobile phone sales amounting to almost 1.9 billion units. In 2019, smartphone sales are on pace to continue to grow, at 5% year over year.<\/p>\n Overall, Gartner estimates that mobile phone lifetimes will increase from 2017 through 2020. “Premium phone lifetimes are expected to increase the most in the near-term, as users look to hold onto these devices due to a lack of new technology impact, prohibiting upgrades,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner.<\/p>\n Mobile phone lifetimes will start to reduce again beyond 2020.<\/p>\n “By 2020, artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities on smartphones will offer a more intelligent digital persona on the device. Machine learning, biometrics and user behaviour will improve the ease of use, self-service and frictionless authentications. This will allow smartphones to be more trusted than other credentials, such as credit cards, passports, IDs or keys,” said Gupta.<\/p>\n Future AI capabilities, including natural-language processing and machine perception (reading all sensors), will allow smartphones to learn, plan and solve problems for users.<\/p>\n “This is not just about making the smartphone smarter, but augmenting users by reducing their cognitive load and enabling a \u2018Digital Me\u2019 that sits on the device,” said Gupta.<\/p>\n
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