tablets catching up to PCs

Worldwide shipments of PCs, tablets, and mobile phones are expected to total 2.4 billion units in 2013, a 9 percent increase from last year, according to new data from Gartner.

Shipments of these devices are forecast to grow even further by 2017 to reach more than 2.9 billion units. But over the next few years, the mix of these devices will "significantly change," as consumers increasingly choose tablets over PCs, the research firm said.

The traditional PC market of desktops and laptops is expected to decline 7.6 percent to 315 million units in 2013, and continue dropping over the next four years as the tablet market grows. Worldwide tablet shipments are predicted to total 197 million units this year, a 69.8 percent increase from 2012 shipments of 116 million units.

"While there will be some individuals who retain both a personal PC and a tablet, especially those who use either or both for work and play, most will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device," Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said in a statement. "As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis."

By 2017, tablet shipments are expected to reach 468 million units, outpacing PC sales of 272 million, Gartner said. This transition from PCs to tablets is being driven by a recent explosion of low-cost tablets with impressive capabilities, according to Gartner.

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Microsoft faces a slide into irrelevance in the next four years unless it can make progress in the smartphone and tablet markets, because the PC market will continue shrinking, warns the research group Gartner.

It says a huge and disruptive shift is underway, in which more and more people will use a tablet as their main computing device, researchers say.

That will also see shipments of Android devices dwarf those of Windows PCs and phones by 2017. Microsoft-powered device shipments will almost be at parity with those of Apple iPhones and iPads - the latter a situation not seen since the 1980s.

In a new forecast published on Thursday morning, Gartner says that by 2015 shipments of tablets will outstrip those of conventional PCs such as desktops and notebooks, as Android and Apple's iOS become increasingly dominant in the overall operating system picture. Android in particular will be installed on more than a billion devices shipped in 2014, says Carolina Milanesi, the analyst who led the research.