FEB. 9, 2011 • According to research group IDC, consumer electronics manufacturers shipped more smartphones worldwide than PCs. The number of smartphones shipped during the last three months of 2010 were up 87% to 100.9 million, compared to 3% bump to 92 million PCs.

Impact: Comparing sales of smartphones with sales of PCs is a perfect example of an apples to oranges analogy.  For the past few years mobile phones have outsold PCs by an order of magnitude of around 3 to 1.  By most accounts global PC sales showed nice growth in 2010.  Meanwhile, mobile phone sales have been weak with the very noticeable exception of smartphones.  However, even with smartphones the issue for content providers remains the same.  Revenue per user is far lower on mobile phones than it has been on the PC.