The smartphone is now a developed market. The tablet is newer, but is clearly catching on with consumers as more companies create products to compete with the iPad.
So at this stage, how are tech analysts looking at the market? Gartner predicts that 1.2 billion “smart devices” will be sold next year, up 50 percent from this year. (To savor that number, here is this fact from Gartner: 821 million smart devices — smartphones and tablets — have been sold in 2012. That’s about 70 percent of all devices sold to consumers in 2012.)
Horace Dediu, who writes some of the smartest analysis of the mobile market on his Asymco blog, is starting to think about the late adopters of smartphones. He notes that comScore has declared that half the cellphones in use in the United States are smartphones. He thinks the fast conversion of late adopters to smartphones will continue. He writes:
The data shows that there are as many first-time smartphone adoptions in late 2012 as there were in late 2010. Or, the new-to-smart users are joining ecosystems just as quickly when penetration is 50 percent as when it was 20 percent. An encouraging situation when considering the opportunity space above 50 percent. The “S-curve” has not reached an inflection point.
He also points out that Android adoption is flattening while Apple devices are still selling at the same pace.
On Monday, Mary Meeker, the technology analyst who is now a Kleiner Perkins partner, made a presentation that predicted that by the middle of next year the number of smart devices in use would surpass PCs.
Henry Blodget, the former analyst who runs the Business Insider blog, notes that the iPad Mini is catching on quickly. He thinks that the smaller, 7-inch screen size will be popular. It may pressure Apple’s profit margins, but it may become the de facto size of a tablet.