With the Euro Zone continuing to be overshadowed by the European debt crisis and the continuous sluggish economic situation in two leading economies such as the United States and China, the global economy remains fragile and the signs of global economic revival are not yet clear. Against such backdrop, the global consumer demand for end-market products and enterprises' attitude towards IT spending are expected to remain conservative and cautious.
With the global economic outlook remaining cloudy, the market performance of global ICT products has not live up to expectations in 2012, including notebook PCs. The full-year global notebook PC industry in 2012 is anticipated to see a 1% year-on-year decline. Currently, only smart handheld devices such as tablets and smartphones are among few to be able to maintain evident growth. According to Taiwan's MIC (Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute), an ICT industry research institute based in Taipei, shipment volume of the global tablet industry will grow up to nearly 70% in 2012 to around 120.0 million units. In addition, global smartphone shipment volume will grow nearly 50% to 680.0 million units in the same year.
Looking ahead to 2013, continued to be affected by several global economic uncertainties, the economic revival signs are expected to remain elusive. Therefore, the ICT Industry will have to continuously rely on emerging technologies and products to bolster growth. The competition among branded vendors of smart handheld device such as tablets and smartphones continues to remain keen. Regarding the mobile computing industry, Microsoft is slated for the launch of new Windows 8/Windows RT OS by the end of 2012, which is likely to have the toll on the ICT industry throughout 2012 and well into 2013. The release of new Windows OS is expected to affect the traditional competition in the PC and tablet industries, thereby driving ICT products towards incremental improvements in terms of product diversification and multi-platform design. Furthermore, the effect will spill over to two CPU branded vendors Intel and ARM and alter the competitive landscape in the mobile computing device market.
As for the development of smartphones, the replacement demand of traditional features phones for smartphones continues. With the share of smartphones increasing year after year, MIC predicts that smartphones' share of the total mobile phone industry will reach over 50% in 2014. Meanwhile, it is anticipated that the Asia Pacific region will become one of major factors to bolster sales of smartphones and in the future the significance of emerging markets such as Latin America, East Europe, and Africa will become more pronounced.
Looking at the long-term development trends of the ICT Industry, MIC estimates that the concept of cloud computing will be solidly grounded. With mobile computing hardware and software technologies near maturity and continuous deployments of cloud-based infrastructure, market demand for cloud devices and data centers will be spurred and more corresponding cloud-based applications and services will be developed, thereby opening up more market opportunities. Consequently, the ICT industry has been evolving from the sole-product competition to the competition focusing on comprehensive solutions supporting multiple platforms. Under the cloud development trends, ICT companies in the future will have to equip with capabilities to provide both software and hardware solutions in order to gain market competitiveness. The current competitive situation happened in smart mobile devices industry will be seen in the future of the cloud-based industry.
With a long-time devotion to hardware design and manufacturing technologies, Taiwanese ICT manufacturers currently are working on how to advance their software development capabilities in order to move upwards toward the upper stream of supply chain to include key components and corresponding technologies. Nevertheless, with product and service developments changing rapidly, other than enhancing their own R&D capabilities, ICT product manufacturers shall actively integrate with the up- and down-stream industries so as to ease the pressure from international brands with vertical integration capability and other emerging industry players.
For future receipt of press releases, or more information about MIC research findings, please contact MIC Public Relations.
About MIC
Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC), based in Taipei, Taiwan, was founded in 1987. MIC is Taiwan's premier IT industry research and consulting firm providing intelligence, in-depth analysis, and strategic consulting services on global IT product and technology trends. MIC is part of the Institute for Information Industry. https://mic.iii.org.tw/english