According to a new research report from Berg Insight, the worldwide number of shipped consumer electronics devices with cellular connectivity grew to 22 million in 2010, compared to 11 million in the previous year.
Notebooks is still the most common device category to equip with cellular connectivity but tablets, e-readers and PNDs are fast growing categories as well. In the next five years, shipments of connected consumer electronics devices are forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 65.2 percent to reach 271 million in 2015.
“The sheer availability of affordable devices with embedded connectivity has exploded during the last year with substantial price reductions on connected personal navigation devices and popular e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook,” said Johan Svanberg, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight.
He added that the Apple iPad caused the market for Internet tablets to take off and there were 17.1 million tablets sold worldwide in 2010 out of which 3.9 million have cellular connectivity. Heightened consumer awareness, decreasing prices of modules and chipsets together with massive global deployments of high speed cellular networks such as LTE will have a great positive impact on the market.
“However, there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to wireless data subscriptions and a great deal of business innovation is needed in order to make embedded cellular connectivity a common feature in consumer devices,” added Svanberg.