American marketing, market research and advisory company Gartner published its latest device sales forecast on end-user sales and overall device spending results.
The company, which started to keep track of the market back in 2010, saw a decline on overall spending on devices for the first time in their latest forecast report.
It added that global combined device shipments are expected to reach up to 2.4 billion units in 2016, an increase of 1.9 percent compared to the data recorded in 2015.
Gartner cited that country-level economic situations will continue to affect the device market this year.
"It's clear that vendors can no longer market their products with only targeting the mature and emerging markets in mind," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner.
According to Atwal, the market is bound to split into four distinct categories as influenced by varying economies around the globe. These include economically challenged mature markets, economically stable mature markets, economically challenged emerging markets and economically stable emerging markets.
"Russia and Brazil will fall into the category of economically challenged emerging markets while India will be stable," said Atwal. He added that Japan shall belong under the economically challenged mature market category.
Last year, Gartner indicated on its report a 2.7 percent increase in device shipments.
The report also showed speculated figures to expect for in 2017 and 2018. While traditional PCs (desk-based and notebook) seemed to show a steady decline from this year up to 2018, premium ultramobiles will continue to enjoy a steady increase in worldwide shipments for the next two years. Devices such as Apple's MacBook Air and Microsoft's Windows 8 Intel x86 are just some of the devices included in the Ultramobile (Premium) category.
Likewise, Apple devices such as the iPad mini and iPad as well as the Acer Iconia Tab 8, Nexus 7 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 belong to the Ultramobile (Basic and Utility Tablets) category.
This category of devices will see minimal increase in worldwide shipments. Around 196 million and 198 million devices are speculated to be shipped in 2017 and 2018, respectively. At least 195 million in Ultramobile worldwide shipments (Basic and Utility) is expected to be reached this year.
"Ultramobile premium devices are expected to drive the PC market forward with the move to Windows 10 and PCs built around Intel's Skylake architecture," said Atwal.
The deployment of Windows 10 among businesses is expected to be accomplished faster as compared to previously launched Windows upgrades. The company said that almost 80 percent of businesses will be able to complete the testing and evaluation phase of Windows in a short span of 12 months. Likewise, more than 60 percent of businesses will reach the same achievement within a period of nine months.
Other highlights revealed in the report include a 2.6 percent increase of mobile phone shipments in 2016; the increased popularity of smartphones, which shall make up 82 percent of mobile phones; and the growing user preference to more capable, basic smartphones as opposed to upgrading to premium smartphones.
