The worldwide market for industrial electronics semiconductors ended 2013 on a strong upbeat note, with overall revenue up convincingly from the previous year and reversing the disappointing decline of 2012.
Last year, consumers in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia snapped up nearly 3.8 million units of headphones and headsets ? a notable growth of 5 percent over the same period a year ago, expanding the overall market also by 5 percent in total worth.
While the market's growth rates remain impressive, they're down dramatically compared to the year-over-year rates of the same quarter one year ago (87.1 percent) and indicate a significant slowing of the overall market.
The Internet of Things (IoT), which excludes PCs, tablets, and smartphones, will grow to 26 billion units installed in 2020 representing an almost 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion in 2009.
Having slimmed down and gained some self-discipline, the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) business is posting its highest profits in nearly three years, allowing suppliers to thrive despite the decline of the PC business that once dominated market demand.
Microsoft over the years has been oft-criticized for copying Apple products. However, Microsoft today could actually garner some admiration by taking a page from Apple?s playbook and offering its latest PC operating system for free.
Riding on the growth momentum from 2013, the Philippines is set to record 11-percent growth in total IT spending by end of 2014, according to research firm IDC.
Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted a year-over-year decline of -3.5 percent, totaling $5.7 billion, during the third quarter of 2013.
