Technology & Telecommunications

The global information technology (IT) spending on devices, including PCs, tablets, mobile phones, printers, as well as data center systems, software, and communications services came to 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars in 2023. By 2024, IT spending is expected to increase to a staggering 5.26 trillion dollars worldwide. 

Both IT services and communication services receive the largest amounts of investments, as these segments include a large array of different services and tools that remain cornerstones to different business functions. For example, different unified communication services are vital to connecting employees virtually and therefore enhance business productivity.

In general, spending on the different IT segments is expected to grow, accelerating digital transformation across various industries. Digital transformation encompasses the utilization of artificial intelligence, process automation, and moving data to the cloud, for example. These processes are empowered by strategic spending on and deployment of different information technologies.

Samsung held the largest slice of the global smartphone market by shipments during the third quarter of 2024, followed by Apple. Xiaomi has taken a tight grip on the third position, accounting for a market share of 13.5 percent in the third quarter of 2024. 

Smartphone vendors have been suffering from the events of the past couple of years, including the pandemic and the economic downturn. However, they all appear to be recovering, as shown by the recent increase in shipments. For instance, mostly based on the main line of Galaxy Series, Samsung's smartphone shipments totaled nearly 226.5 million units globally in 2023.

Next to Samsung, Apple is a major manufacturer of smartphones worldwide, with the company shipping more than 232 million iPhones worldwide in 2023 - a number that made Apple leading smartphone vendor for the first time ever. Apple’s sales tend to be very cyclical, peaking in the fourth quarter each year, much like in the fourth quarter of 2023, when they took the first spot in terms of units shipped globally with around 80.5 units.

While Apple and Samsung are typically the two major companies challenging for the top spot, Huawei had provided a strong challenge in recent years. Particularly, the Chinese company managed to climb the smartphone market ladder between 2011 and 2020, recording shipments of over 32 million smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2020. However, strong performances from rivals like Xiaomi and the effects of the U.S. trade ban have since seen Huawei fall outside the list of top five vendors by smartphone shipments.

The global extended reality (XR) market that includes augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) reached 29.26 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, rising to over 100 billion U.S. dollars by 2026.

Augmented reality (AR) Augmented reality (AR) technology integrates digital information with the physical environment, live and in real-time. Through the addition of graphics, sounds, haptic feedback, or even smell to the natural world as it exists, AR can combine real life with a super-imposed image or animation using the camera on a mobile device or AR headset. As part of the wider extended reality (XR) industry, the global AR market size is expected to grow considerably in the coming years.

Metaverse Regarded as the next iteration of the internet, the metaverse is where the physical and digital worlds come together. As an evolution of social technologies, the metaverse allows digital representations of people, avatars, to interact with each other in a variety of settings. Whether it be at work, in an office, going to concerts or sports events, or even trying on clothes, the metaverse provides a space for endless, interconnected virtual communities using virtual reality (VR) headsets, AR glasses, smartphone apps, or other devices.

Lenovo shipped 16.59 million personal computers during the third quarter of 2024, surpassing HP's 13.57 million shipments in that same quarter and retaining its position as market leader. Dell occupies the third place on the list, shipping nearly 10 million PCs. There is a growing trend of consolidation, with HP, Lenovo, and Dell taking up an increasing PC market share.

The nature of the PC market is changing, as many vendors are gravitating towards the expanding software industry. A predominate adaptation strategy is to incorporate new technologies into the PC experience. For example, Dell Technologies, which has a market share of around 15 to 20 percent, is prioritizing enterprise software and cloud solutions, and a new direction for its PC design by including virtual and artificial intelligence technologies into Dell Workstations. HP is responding to the changing market environment by focusing on developing its product line of premium devices for gaming ecosystems. Lenovo’s response has been developing devices specifically for corporate use, as well as integrating virtual reality headsets into their line of computers.

The type of computing hardware preferred by consumers has shifted significantly, as portable devices become more durable, more capable, and more affordable. Desktop-PCs – once a must for any user that intended to purposefully use their device for work or play – are the biggest victim of this shift. In 2010, desktop PC shipments reached 157 million units, a figure that is expected to fall to 70 million by 2025. Tablets have filled the hole left by declining PC sales, rising from 19 million units shipped in 2010, to an expected 140 million in 2025.

Android maintained its position as the leading mobile operating system worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2024 with a market share of about 72.04 percent. Android's closest rival, Apple's iOS, had a market share of approximately 27.49 percent during the same period. 

Both unveiled in 2007, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS have evolved through incremental updates introducing new features and capabilities. The latest version of iOS, iOS 18, was released in September 2024, while the most recent Android iteration, Android 15, was made available in September 2023. A key difference between the two systems concerns hardware - iOS is only available on Apple devices, whereas Android ships with devices from a range of manufacturers such as Samsung, Google and OnePlus. In addition, Apple has had far greater success in bringing its users up to date. As of February 2024, 66 percent of iOS users had iOS 17 installed, while in the same month only 13 percent of Android users ran the latest version.

From around 2010, the touchscreen smartphone revolution had a major impact on sales of basic feature phones, as the sales of smartphones increased from 139 million units in 2008 to 1.39 billion units in 2023. In 2020, smartphone sales decreased to 1.38 billion units due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Apple, Samsung, and lately also Xiaomi, were the big winners in this shift towards smartphones, with BlackBerry and Nokia among those unable to capitalize.

In 2024, semiconductor sales were expected to reach 611.23 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. Semiconductors are crucial components of electronics devices and the industry is highly competitive. The year-on-year decline rate in 2023 equated to 9.4 percent, although a swift recovery is expected in 2024 with growth of 16 percent.

Semiconductor market A semiconductor is a substance that conducts electricity under some but not all circumstances. Manufacturers are able to customize the conductivity of a semiconductor, such as introducing a sensitivity to heat or light, or altering conductivity based on the direction of the current. Semiconductors are an important component of many commonly used electronic devices including smartphones, tablets, and PCs. Notable semiconductor chip makers include Intel and Samsung Electronics, with Intel generating 48.7 billion U.S. dollars and Samsung generating 39.9 billion U.S. dollars in semiconductor revenue in 2023, placing them among the largest companies in terms of semiconductor industry revenues.

Market opportunities Smartphones are expected to command an important part of the semiconductor market going forward, especially as these devices become more advanced and able to support technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, 5G, and artificial intelligence. ​Semiconductors for use in servers and data centers are set to become an even more important opportunity, with semiconductor innovation required to support cloud data centers and the rise in edge computing.

The number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices worldwide is forecast to almost double from 15.9 billion in 2023 to more than 32.1 billion IoT devices in 2030. In 2033, the highest number of IoT devices will be found in China, with around 8 billion consumer devices. 
IoT devices are used in all types of industry verticals and consumer markets, with the consumer segment accounting for around 60 percent of all IoT or connected devices in 2023. This share is projected to stay at this level over the next ten years. 

Major industry verticals with currently more than 100 million connected IoT devices are electricity, gas, steam & A/C, water supply & waste management, retail & wholesale, transportation & storage, and government. Overall, the number of IoT devices across all industry verticals is forecast to grow to more than eight billion by 2033.

The most important use case for IoT devices in the consumer segment are consumer internet & media devices such as smartphones, where the number of IoT devices is forecast to grow to more than 17 billion by 2033. Other use cases with more than one billion IoT devices by 2033 are connected (autonomous) vehicles, IT infrastructure, asset tracking & monitoring, and smart grid.

In the first quarter of 2024, the most popular vendor in the cloud infrastructure services market, Amazon Web Services (AWS), controlled 31 percent of the entire market. Microsoft Azure takes second place with 25 percent market share, followed by Google Cloud with 10 percent market share. Together, these three cloud vendors account for 66 percent of total spend in the first quarter of 2024. Organizations use cloud services from these vendors for machine learning, data analytics, cloud native development, application migration, and other services. 

Amazon Web Services is used by many organizations because it offers a wide variety of services and products to its customers that improve business agility while being secure and reliable. One of AWS’s most used services is Amazon EC2, which lets customers create virtual machines for their strategic projects while spending less time on maintaining servers. Another important service is Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), which offers a secure file storage service. In addition, Amazon also offers security, website infrastructure management, and identity and access management solutions.

Vendors offering cloud services to a global customer base do so through different types of cloud computing, which include infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Further, there are different cloud computing deployment models available for customers, namely private cloud and public cloud, as well as community cloud and hybrid cloud. A cloud deployment model is defined based on the location where the deployment resides, and who has access to and control over the infrastructure.

The market for artificial intelligence grew beyond 184 billion U.S. dollars in 2024, a considerable jump of nearly 50 billion compared to 2023. This staggering growth is expected to continue with the market racing past 826 billion U.S. dollars in 2030.

AI demands data

Data management remains the most difficult task of AI-related infrastructure. This challenge takes many forms for AI companies. Some require more specific data, while others have difficulty maintaining and organizing the data their enterprise already possesses. Large international bodies like the EU, the US, and China all have limitations on how much data can be stored outside their borders. Together these bodies pose significant challenges to data-hungry AI companies.

AI could boost productivity growth

Both in productivity and labor changes, the U.S. is likely to be heavily impacted by the adoption of AI. This impact need not be purely negative. Labor rotation, if handled correctly, can swiftly move workers to more productive and value-added industries rather than simple manual labor ones. In turn, these industry shifts will lead to a more productive economy. Indeed, AI could boost U.S. labor productivity growth over a 10-year period. This, of course, depends on a variety of factors, such as how powerful the next generation of AI is, the difficulty of tasks it will be able to perform, and the number of workers displaced.

The generative artificial intelligence (AI) market is expected to rise significantly, from 11 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 to nearly 128 billion U.S. dollars in 2024 and more than 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars in 2032. This is due to an explosion of generative AI tools in recent years such as Bard by Google, ChatGPT by OpenAI, and Midjourney by Midjourney, Inc.