Smartphones leapfrog PC sales for first time
2011 has proven to be a historic year for smartphones as sales of such devces, for the first time ever, exceeded those of PCs.
According to data released by Canalsys some 488m smartphones were shipped, substantially more than the 415m PCs (including tablets) dispatched over the same period.
The figures reflect a huge 63% surge in smartphone sales over 2011, driven in large part by Apple whose iPhone helped the firm supplant Nokia as the world’s leading seller of smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Apple shipped a total of 93.1m iPhones in 2011, 96% more than its 2010 total.
By contrast growth in sales of desktop PC’s stood at a relatively anaemic 2.3% over the year, paving the way for smartphones to dominate the consumer computing sector going forward.