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Smartphones and tablets to overtake PC in 2011

by on01 September 2011


500 million vs 400 million units
Back at Globalfoundries’ technology conference Gregg Bartlett, Globalfoundries Sr. VP Technology and Integration Engineering showed off a slide that claims tablets and smartphones might overtake PCs in 2011.

The data comes from market research companies like HIS iSuppli and Mercury Research. It becomes even more interesting in 2012, as the smartphone and tablet industry should grow to over 700 million units while PC will grow to somewhat below 500 million PCs.

All of a sudden ARM chips inside many tablets and phones became even more important, but then again, 2011 didn’t exactly see great sales of tablets that don’t have an Apple logo at the back, with little chance for a dramatic change in the remaining few months of 2011.

The only issue is that with 500 million PC and notebook chip you can make dramatically more money than selling 700 million chips for phones and tablets, due to a much lower average selling price. Whereas high end PC CPUs go sell for hundreds of dollars apiece, a high end ARM-based chip costs a dozen bucks or so.

It is certain that the success of smartphones cannot be ignored and tablets are likely going to become even bigger thing in 2012. iPad certainly proved that there is a market for this emerging form factor, but few companies aside from Apple had much success in the tablet market.

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