Tim Cook Announcing The Apple iPad Air

As Apple Inc looks to revive lagging tablet sales with the upcoming launch of the new iPad Air, Retina iMacs and possibly a new Retina iPad mini,  Gartner today released its latest report showing tablet sales declining steeply in 2014.

Gartner Inc.’s Q3 and annual figures for device sales worldwide (including smartphones, tablets, and PC’s of all sizes) report shows tablet sales slowing dramatically with only an 11% increase in sales since 2013. This is a huge decrease from 2013, which saw a growth of 55%.

“Some tablet users are not replacing a tablet with a tablet, they are favoring hybrid or two-in-one devices, increasing its share of the ultramobile premium market to 22 percent in 2014, and 32 percent by 2018,” said Mr. Atwal.

Sales of PC’s also continue its download slope with sales of 276 million units for 2014, down 20 million from the previous year.

It’s no surprise that smartphones continue to grow considerably. “The market is clearly favoring those vendors offering value in lower-priced smartphones. This trend has become more apparent, especially in the second quarter of 2014 when most of the top Chinese smartphone vendors grew volume and market share,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner. “As smartphones reach lower prices, Gartner expects nine out of 10 phones to be smartphones by 2018.”

Android is set to grow 47% in emerging markets this year. Gartner estimates that shipments of Android devices will reach 1 billion in the emerging markets by 2015.

When looking at how mature and emerging markets are comparing in terms of operating systems, it is no surprise that investment will continue to go towards the emerging markets, as they are the ones who are driving the sales.

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