According to IDC, global shipments of personal computing devices (PCD)-- comprising traditional PCs and tablets-- are to decline by -3.3% in 2019, before the market shrinks to 372.6 million units in 2023 with a CAGR of -1.2%.

Detachables are set to grow "modestly" over the 5-year forecast period, with a CAGR of 4.6%. IDC says the product category should see a stronger impact in the commercial segment, as vendors increasingly focus on the enterprise and education markets for sales. Education-centric Chrome-based devices are to find some traction as detachable Chrome tablets enter the scene.

On the other hand slate tablets are to continue declining with a CAGR of -4.4%. The market is becoming increasingly concentrated around the holiday quarters, and competition from key players has lead to more brands either reducing their presence or exiting the market altogether.

According to Jon Peddie Research (JPR) the news is not too good for the GPU market-- global shipments are down by -3.3% on a Y-o-Y basis (or by -2.65% Q-o-Q), with all major vendors seeing declines.

In fact, Nvidia shipments see a -7.6% Q-o-Q drop, AMD shipments are down by -6.8% Q-o-Q and Intel shipments see a -0.7% Q-o-Q decline. The two big vendors also see a drop in market share, as AMD and Nvidia market share decreased by -0.6% and -0.82% respectively. On the other hand Intel market share is up by 1.4%.

The year coming to a close is a time for both celebration and contemplation, especially when the year was as tumultuous as that known as 2018. In our case we ponder about the year in our industry, so join us as we take a look at what we believe were the biggest stories.

Ericsson takes a peek into the crystal ball to predict what will be hot for 2019-- a year promising more convenience through increasingly capable virtual assistants, emotion-reading AI and even means to appear in two places, at the same time!

To work out what exactly will be huge next year, Ericsson held an online survey on October 2018 of 5097 "advanced" internet users in a number of cities, namely Johannesburg, London, Mexico City, Moscow, New York, San Francisco, São Paulo, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo. It also makes use of 2017-2018 survey data from the Ericsson ConsumerLab analytical platform, with data from 72067 smartphone users in 50 countries. Anyway, here are the trends: