Connected devices to surge past 1 billion mark, says IDC

Smart connected device shipment will surge past the 1 billion mark in 2012 and push 2 billion in 2016, according to IDC.

For 2011, IDC said that 916 million smart devices were shipped with revenue topping $489 billion. For 2012, IDC is projecting 1.1 billion units and 1.84 billion by 2016.

The reason? Consumers and businesses will be upgrading to connected devices at a compound annual growth rate of 15.4 percent.

More notable, however, is the mix of connected devices. Tablets will certainly grow as a portion of all devices but hit the 200 million mark in 2016. PCs will grow slightly, but smartphones will grab a bigger part of the device mix, according to IDC's chart.

IDC is projecting a shift from the x86 platform to ARM through 2016. Windows PCs on x86 will account for 25.1 percent of connected devices in 2016, down from 35.9 percent in 2011. Android devices on ARM will have market share of 31.1 percent in 2016, up from 29.4 percent in 2011. Apple's iOS share will have share of 17.3 percent in 2016, up from 14.6 percent in 2011.

Bottom line: Connected devices are going to be a heterogeneous ball game and companies will have to deploy bring your own device schemes to manage multiple devices.