Manufacturers shipped more smartphones than personal computers in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to research, crowning mobile devices as the computing platform of choice earlier than many industry-watchers had expected.
Makers of mobile devices distributed a total of 101m smartphones in the last three months of the year, up 87 per cent from the same period a year earlier, according to International Data Corp, the market researcher.
IDC had earlier said that PC shipments reached 92m units in the fourth quarter, up less than 3 per cent.
Analysts had expected smartphones to take the lead at some point in 2011, but the transition happened more quickly as a wide range of manufacturers of mobile devices embraced Android, the malleable open-source operating system from Google.