A Watershed Quarter: Smartphones Outsell PCs

According to IDC via an article in ReadWriteWeb, global smartphones sales exceeded global PC sales for the first time in the 4th quarter of 2010.

If Joe Biden were a techie, he would likely say “this is a big ******* deal!”

100.9 million smartphones were shipped in Q4 2010, an increase of 87% compared to Q4 2009.  PC sales were up 5.5% year over year, with 92.1 million units shipped in Q4 of 2010.

PCs still outsold smartphones for the total year, with 346 million PC shipped in 2010 versus 302 million smartphones. 

But smartphones will easily outsell PCs in 2011, and if you add in other mobile computing devices like tablets it becomes clear just how much the world is shifting to mobile computing.