The Chinese smart connected device (SCD) market is expected to grow 45 per cent in 2013, according to research firm IDC. It defines SCDs as including smartphones, tablets, laptops and connected PCs. The growth rate of tablets is forecast to be 77 per cent in the year, whilst that of smartphones is 64 per cent. However, PC sales are expected to fall by 12 per cent.

“The consumer SCD install base reached 780 million at the end of 2013, tripling the number of two years ago,” said Kitty Fok, Managing Director of IDC China. “In the future, the China SCD market is going to move from an explosive growth phase into a more matured development phase. But the changes on product, market, application and technology will not slow down.”

IDC predicts that by the end of 2017, the total consumer SCD install base will reach 1.2 billion, while that of all SCD will reach 1.4 billion. It also made a series of predictions about the SCD market in China, including:

The Chinese SCD market will grow by 17 per cent during 2014, with the installed base of smartphones reaching 500m, whilst the PC market will start to recover with the fall slowing to 1.4 per cent.

130m 4G smartphones will be shipped out to the market in 2014. China Mobile has already announced that it will sell 100m 4G smartphones in the year, and TD-LTE services from two other operators will soon launch.

The ecosystem of domestic IT vendors will continue to improve, with Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE and Coolpad now featuring in the global top ten of SCD manufacturers.

The Chinese rural market (which accounts for 50 per cent of the country’s population) will see the deployment of SCDs grow to 1.1 billion in 2014, as broadband access improves and device prices fall.

The percentage of tablets with call function will account for 35 per cent of total tablet shipments, whilst the percentage of NFC-enabled smartphones will account for 15 per cent of total shipments.