Apple is now the largest buyer of semiconductors in the world, according to market research firm Gartner. The Cupertino-based company trailed both Samsung and HP in 2010, however Apple’s spending is estimated to have jumped 34.6% in 2011. The company spent $17.3 billion on semiconductors in 2011, or 5.7% of the total share of chip purchases. Coming in second was Samsung, which spent $16.7 billion or 5.5% of all chip purchases, and HP came in third with $16.6 billion. Leading electronics manufacturers...

Google’s Android platform continued to grow rapidly in the third quarter of 2011 as shipments of Apple’s iPhone declined. New data released by market research firm Gartner on Tuesday shows that Android powered more than half of the smartphones that sold to end users last quarter at 52%. In the same quarter last year, Android was found on just 25.3% of smartphones sold. The second largest share last quarter belonged to Symbian according to Gartner, though it’s share was nearly halved from 36....

More money is being spent purchasing music online than ever before according to a new report from Gartner. The firm’s data suggests that consumer spending on online music will reach $6.3 billion this year, up from $5.9 billion in 2010. “As consumers opt for connected devices — media tablets, smartphones and connected media players — across world regions, their desire for access to and consumption of music and content is growing as well,” Gartner research vice president Mike McGuire said...

Apple’s wildly popular iPad 2 will have “free run” in the tablet market this holiday season according to market research firm Gartner. As many Apple competitors continue to spin their wheels, Gartner says global tablet sales are on pace to total 63.6 million units in 2011. Only 17.6 million consumer tablets were sold in 2010, and Apple accounted for the overwhelming majority of sales. The firm anticipates that Apple will account for 73.4% of tablets sold in 2011 — a figure that coincides w...

Gartner released a report on Friday that suggested Google’s Gmail solution is ready to take on Microsoft in the enterprise email arena despite having just a tiny fraction of the market. “While Gmail’s enterprise email market share currently hovers around 1 percent, it has close to half of the market for enterprise cloud email,” Gartner research vice president Matthew Cain said. “While cloud email is still in its infancy, at 3 percent to 4 percent of the overall enterprise email m...

According to research reports from Gartner and IDC, Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system will grab about 20% of the smartphone market by 2015, enough to propel the OS past Apple’s iOS platform to take the No. 2 spot globally. Research firm Gartner believes Android will have a 49% market share in 2015, followed by Windows Phone at 19.5%, and Apple’s iOS growth will slow so much that it will only maintain a 17% share. IDC believes Windows Phone will have a 20.3 percent share in 2015. Dur...

Gartner on Thursday issued its global mobile phone sales data for the second quarter, which shows that the industry grew 16.5% from the same quarter last year, to 428.7 million units. Smartphone sales jumped 74% year-on-year, with 107.7 million smartphones having been sold to end users around the world. “Smartphone sales continued to rise at the expense of feature phones,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner, in a statement. “Consumers in mature markets are choosing ent...

Mobile data connections are poised grow 11% in 2011, driving global mobile data revenue to $314.7 billion. Market research firm Gartner on Thursday said mobile data connections will reach 5.6 billion this year compared to 5 billion in 2010, driving global revenue from mobile data up 22.5% from the $257 billion earned last year. “Mobile data traffic will increase significantly as more people will have access to mobile data networks, there is a migration toward smartphones and an increase in sales of medi...

Market research firms Gartner and IDC have both released preliminary data for global PC sales in the second quarter of 2011, and the reports paint a much improved picture compared to the first quarter of the year. Lenovo was the biggest winner globally in terms of growth according to Gartner, having shipped 10.23 million PCs for a 12% share of the market. The China-based vendor’s PC market share grew a whopping 22.5% compared to the same quarter a year prior, and Lenovo now finds itself in the No. 3 spo...

A new report from market research firm Gartner on Tuesday suggests global spending on the gaming ecosystem will exceed $74 billion this year, up 10.4% from 2010. Gartner also expects annual spending on video games to reach $112 billion by 2015. As the video game industry undergoes a transition that places a sharper focus on casual gaming, Gartner now includes the following in its definition of the “gaming ecosystem:” dedicated video game consoles; software for dedicated consoles; handheld dedicate...

According to a new research report from Gartner, consumers are on track to spend a record $2.1 trillion on digital information and entertainment products this year. That figure is expected to hit $2.8 trillion by 2015. $1.2 trillion — 62% — is spent on subscription-based communication services such as mobile, voice, and data services, broadband packages, video services, online gaming, and cable TV subscriptions. $600 billion, 28% of the total $2.1 trillion, is spent on devices themselves, and 10% is spent...

Market research firm Gartner on Wednesday said that growth of PC sales would slow to 9.3% in 2011 as consumers reduce spending and hold onto their PCs longer. Gartner had previously projected that PC sales would grow 10.5% this year. Beyond belt tightening, Gartner notes that the slowed PC growth is due in part to strong sales of Apple’s iPad line and other tablets. The issue is not that tablets are replacing personal computers, however, as Gartner says these media tablets have just caused consumers to ...

Does the number 36 mean anything to you? If you’re an Android fan it should. A report from analytics firm Gartner indicates that 36.3 million Android handsets were sold during Q1 of 2011 giving the mobile operating system a 36% share of all smartphones sold during that same period. An impressive figure on its own, but even more-so when considering that Android saw sales of 5.2 million units and held a 9.6% share of sales in Q1 just one year prior. Nokia’s Symbian operating system sold 27.6 million...

According to research firm Gartner, although Microsoft shipped 2 million Windows Phone units during Q4 of 2010, it sold 1.6 million units during Q1 of 2011.”Windows Phone saw only modest sales that reached 1.6 million units in the first quarter of 2011,” wrote Gartner. “Devices launched at the end of 2010 failed to grow in consumer preference and CSPs continued to focus on Android.” Gartner is, however, predicting big things for Microsoft’s smartphone operating system. By 2015, the analyti...