Tablets have been nipping at PCs' heels in the sales stakes for some time, and now market-watcher IDC predicts that they will overtake them for the first time in the fourth quarter this year.
In other words, more people will be buying tablets than PCs this Christmas. Quelle surprise.
What you may not know is that PCs still hold the crown for selling more over the course of a year – for now. According to IDC, that trend will reverse to see tablets sell more than PCs on a yearly basis by 2015.
Continued decline
The reasons for this are twofold. First, IDC expects that the PC market's fortunes will continue its long and drawn out decline.
The company lowered its forecast for the market by 10% last month, and it predicts that by 2017, total shipments will drop to 13% of the overall 'connected device' market made up of PCs, smartphones and tablets.
This is a different story to the smartphone market, which IDC predicts will surpass 1.4 billion units in 2015 and will account for 69% of all 'smart connected' devices globally.
The smartphone market will grow 10.6% in 2013, IDC predicts, but will see growth slow to 3.1% in 2017 as the rising popularity of low-cost smartphones will see it pull in gradually lower revenue.
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