In 2010, worldwide IT spending totaled $3.4 trillion, up 5.4 percent from 2009.

Gartner has raised its outlook for 2011 global IT spending from its previous forecast of 3.5 percent growth. In 2010, the IT industry performed better than Gartner’s previous forecast of 3.2 percent growth.

“Aided by favorable U.S. dollar exchange rates, global IT spending growth is expected to exceed 5 percent in 2010, but a similar level of growth in 2011 — while forecast — is far from certain, given continued macroeconomic uncertainty," said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner.

"While the global economic situation is improving, the recovery is slow and hampered by a sluggish growth outlook in the important mature economies of the U.S. and Western Europe. There are also growing concerns about the ability of key emerging economies to sustain relatively high growth rates. Nevertheless, as well as a fundamental enabler of cost reduction and cost optimization, investment in IT is seen increasingly as an important element in business growth strategies. As the global economy repairs itself in coming years, we are optimistic about continued healthy spending on IT."

The telecom equipment market is poised for the strongest growth in 2011, with worldwide telecom equipment spending forecast to grow 9.1 percent.

The computing hardware segment is forecast to grow 7.5 percent in 2011, but Gartner analysts said vendors face possible challenges, particularly in the area of PC growth, given likely weak economic growth through the first half of 2011.

With Facebook expected to launch its own email service on Monday, analysts at Gartner seem to be right on target.

“In the past, organizations supported collaboration through e-mail and highly structured applications only,” said Monica Basso, research vice president at Gartner.

“Today, social paradigms are converging with e-mail, instant messaging (IM) and presence, creating new collaboration styles. However, a truly collaborative, effective and efficient workplace will not arise until organizations make these capabilities widely available and users become more comfortable with them. Technology is only an enabler; culture is a must for success.”

While microblogging is reshaping enterprise communications, business communications are evolving. Newer employees will enter the workforce with a predisposition to communicate via a social network, but they will use e-mail in parallel.

“The rigid distinction between e-mail and social networks will erode,” Ms. Basso said. “E-mail will take on many social attributes, such as contact brokering, while social networks will develop richer e-mail capabilities.”

Vendors such as Microsoft and IBM will add links to internal and external social networks from within e-mail clients and servers, making services such as contacts, calendars and tasks shareable across e-mail and social networks. By 2012, Gartner said contact lists, calendars and messaging clients in any smartphones will be social-enabled applications.

Collaboration is slowly moving to the cloud, and Gartner analysts expect to see steep growth rates for sales of premises- and cloud-based social networking services. Organizations will use hybrid models where some services live on-premises and some are in the cloud. Gartner predicts that the percentage of e-mail accounts on cloud services will grow to 10 percent by year-end 2012, up 7 percent from 2009.

From a vendor’s perspective, the market is consolidating around Microsoft and Research In Motion (RIM), the two market leaders. Gartner forecasts that by 2012, RIM and Microsoft will own 80 percent of the enterprise wireless e-mail software market.

“The reality is that mobile collaboration will increase for all categories of workers, and organizations can either take the lead, or be led by their users,” said Ms. Basso.

“The most progressive organizations won’t be afraid to explore the innovative communications and collaboration models enabled by new devices and social services allow their employees to generate innovative ideas by experimenting with them.”

Let’s cover the near-term figures first.  Gartner believes Android will exit 2010 with a market share of 17.7 percent, just ahead of Research In Motion’s 17.5 percent.  Symbian, meanwhile, is supposed to hold a market share of 40.1 percent.

Then Android should experience a period of (continued) rapid growth, increasing its market share to 22.2 percent in 2011 and 29.6 percent in 2014.  And that should put it within striking distance of Symbian, which Gartner claims will have seen its market share shrink to 30.2 percent by then.

This is all good news for Google, to say the least, considering Gartner’s reputation.  Apple fans and shareholders, meanwhile, will have to consider how happy they are with the idea of a steady market share of around 15 percent.

Microsoft supporters will have even more thinking to do, since Gartner’s stats give it almost no chance of succeeding in the mobile market.

Roberta Cozza, a principal research analyst at Gartner, stressed in a statement, "[W]e believe that market share in the OS space will consolidate around a few key OS providers that have the most support from CSPs and developers and strong brand awareness with consumer and enterprise customers."

Gartner explained in an official statement, "In the smartphone operating system (OS) market, Android expanded rapidly in the second quarter of 2010, overtaking Apple’s iPhone OS to become the third-most-popular OS in the world."

As the table below shows, Android will secure second place if current trends sustain themselves for any length of time, too.

What’s more, setting aside all the global data, Gartner indicated, "In the U.S, [Android] also overtook RIM’s OS to become the No. 1 smartphone OS in this region."

It’s hard to imagine how things could go any better for Google.  The only thing the search giant has to worry about is the fact that the iPhone 4′s launch isn’t covered by this data (it occurred after the end of the second quarter), and that represents a significant opportunity for the iOS to regain some ground.

The third quarter should be a very important period for Google (and Apple), then, perhaps determining the shape of the smartphone market for at least a year or two.

Gartner pegged Android’s sales at 1.6 percent of the smartphone market for the first quarter of 2009.  For the first quarter of 2010, that figure was 9.6 percent, instead, which works out to an increase of 600 percent in the space of one year.

Meanwhile, Windows Mobile’s sales decreased from 10.2 percent to 6.8 percent of the total, allowing Android to take fourth place.  And the iPhone OS’s share of sales didn’t increase by quite as much, bringing Android somewhat closer to third.

Apple and Android are, despite their third- and fourth-place finishes, arguably the winners here, too.  Gartner observed in a statement, "Android and Apple were the only two OSs vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year.  Symbian remained in the No. 1 position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio."

Android and the iPhone OS are still a long way from the top, though, meaning Google may have to work its way through a lot more desserts before displacing another competitor.

According to Gartner, mobile app stores will exceed 4.5 billion downloads in 2010, eight out of ten of which will be free. Gartner also forecasts worldwide downloads in mobile application stores to surpass 21.6 billion by 2013, and free downloads to account for 82% of all downloads in 2010 (87% in 2013).

"As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads," said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. "Games remain the No. 1 application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money."

"Growth in smartphone sales will not necessarily mean that consumers will spend more money, but it will widen the addressable market for an offering that will be advertising-funded," added Baghdassarian. "The value chain of the application stores will evolve as rules are set and broken in an attempt to find the most profitable business model for all parties involved."

"Application stores will be a core focus throughout 2010 for the mobile industry and applications themselves will help determine the winner among mobile devices platforms," said Carolina Milanesi, another research director at Gartner. "Consumers will have a wide choice of stores and will seek the ones that make it easy for them to discover applications they are interested in and make it easy to pay for them when they have to. Developers will have to consider carefully not only which platform to support but also which store to promote their applications in."

Some of Gartners numbers have been brought into question by another research firm, comScore. In reference to a Gartner claim that Apple App Store downloads accounted for 99.4% of all mobile app downloads in 2009,  comScore analyst Alistair Hill is quoted as saying, "I think somebody’s missed something out on the maths there…I find that hard to believe. We know iPhone users buy a lot more apps than anybody else, but that still doesn’t work."

Still, we haven’t seen anything solid to dispute the claim. But we might see something surface soon.

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Smartphone sales showed solid growth with more than 41 million units sold for a 12.8 percent increase from the same period last year.

"The third quarter of 2009 saw the announcement of many new mobile devices, including several Android smartphones ready for the holiday season in the fourth quarter, but hardware commoditisation and the growth in open platforms will make it harder for them to stand out," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner.

"Many devices will reach the market in time for Christmas, and mobile carriers will run incentives for consumers during the holidays. We expect sales of mobile devices in the fourth quarter of 2009 to show year-over-year growth," said Ms Milanesi.

"As many vendors and industry watchers call for a decrease in sales into the channel, our sell through data is showing that 2009 performance will be flat rather than down over 2008."

Nokia led the mobile market in Q3 with 36.7 percent of the share, followed by Samsung at 19.6 percent and LG with 10.3 percent market share.

Nokia also ranked at the top in smartphone sales with 39.3 percent of the market, followed by Blackberry maker Research in Motion with 20.8 percent and Apple with 17.1 percent.

"Smartphones continued to represent the fastest-growing segment of the mobile-devices market and we remain confident about the potential for smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2009 and in 2010," said Ms Milanesi.
 

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Matt Hamblen talked to Ken Dulaney, who’s a vice president at Gartner, and wrote afterward, "While the Google-backed Android mobile operating system currently runs on less than 2% of all smartphones, Gartner Inc. predicts it will surge to 14% of the global smartphone market in 2012 . . ." 

Granted, 14 percent doesn’t sound like a whole lot.  But according to Dulaney’s forecast, that’ll be enough to put Android ahead of the iPhone OS, the BlackBerry OS, and Windows Mobile.  Plus, even the market leader – Symbian – won’t have a huge share, with Dulaney calculating that it’ll control just 39 percent of the market in three years’ time.

Android’s been on something of a roll in the past couple of days.  First came an announcement about a partnership with Verizon.  Then the mobile operating system (and its bright future) became the subject of a session at SMX East.

Google’s no doubt hoping that all of this will lead to the Gartner prediction coming true, and may have its sights set even higher.

A total of 422 million households will have a fixed broadband connection in 2009, up from 382 million households in 2008, and the market will continue to grow with nearly 580 million connections by 2013.

"Consumers may be watching their household expenditure, but dropping their broadband connections is not on the top of their agendas as a way to reduce outgoings," said Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner.

"Multiple motivations are conspiring to keep broadband growth strong, such as PCs being more affordable, migration from dial-up, affordably priced broadband subscriptions, aging populations requiring broadband connectivity, and even as a result of an economic boost from country-specific economic and broadband-specific stimulus plans."

At the end of 2008, 21 countries had broadband connections in at least 50 percent of homes. In many countries the rates are much higher. The highest penetration is in South Korea at 86 percent and lowest is Indonesia at less than 1 percent.

Gartner predicts over the next five years, the emerging markets (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Latin American countries, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa) will combined provide twice as many new consumer broadband connections as mature markets: 135 million vs. 62 million connections respectively.

Currently the U.S. the broadband household penetration rate is 60 percent and Gartner forecasts that to climb to 78 percent in 2013.

 

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/global-broadband-continues-solid-growth-2009-09/feed 2 http://www.webpronews.com/smartphone-sales-up-27-2009-08 http://www.webpronews.com/smartphone-sales-up-27-2009-08#comments Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:44:09 +0000 Mike Sachoff http://www.webpronews.com/?p=51038 Global mobile phone sales reached 286.1 million units in the second quarter of 2009, a 6.1 percent decrease from the second quarter of 2008, according to a new report from Gartner.

Smartphone sales were a bright spot for the industry, surpassing 40 million units, a 27 percent increase from the same period last year, representing the fastest growing segment of the mobile devices market.

]]> Global mobile phone sales reached 286.1 million units in the second quarter of 2009, a 6.1 percent decrease from the second quarter of 2008, according to a new report from Gartner.

Smartphone sales were a bright spot for the industry, surpassing 40 million units, a 27 percent increase from the same period last year, representing the fastest growing segment of the mobile devices market.

Carolina Milanesi
Research Director
Gartner

"Despite the challenging market, some devices sold well as consumers who would usually have purchased standard midrange devices either cut back to less expensive handsets or moved up the range to get more features for their money," said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner.

"Touchscreen and qwerty devices remained a major driver for replacement sales and benefited manufacturers with strong, touch-focused midtier devices. However, the decline in average selling price (ASP) accelerated in the first half of the year and particularly affected manufacturers that focus on midtier and low-end devices, where margins are already slim."

Nokia landed in the stop spot, but its portfolio remained heavily skewed toward low-end devices. Its N97 smartphone has sold 500,000 since launching in June compared to Apple’s iPhone 3G S, which sold 1 million units in its first weekend.

"The right high-end product and an increased focus on services and content are vital for Nokia if it wants to both revamp its brand and please investors with a more promising outlook in ASPs and margins," said Ms Milanesi.

Samsung and LG both had very a very solid second quarter with sales of 55 million units and 30.5 million units respectively. Samsung’s touchscreen devices, qwerty phones and smartphones drove sales in mature markets, and Gartner forecasts it will continue to gain market share in the second half of 2009 to close the gap with Nokia.

Apple’s entry into a larger number of countries in the past year has helped it boost sales, along with recent price adjustments on the 8GB 3G iPhone. Sales of 5.4 million units in the second quarter indicated a 509 percent growth in shipments and helped Apple remain in the No.3 position in the smartphone market.

"Smartphone sales were strong during the second quarter of 2009, with sales of 40.9 million units in line with Gartner’s forecast of 27 per cent year-on-year sales growth for 2009," said Ms Milanesi.

"Given the higher margins, smartphones offer the biggest opportunity for manufacturers. It is the fastest-growing market segment and the most resistant to declining ASPs."
 

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