According to Futuresource Consulting, the VR headset market sees shipments grow by 5% in 2019, and while sales growth is slowing down the outlook remains positive for the near future.

As the analyst puts it, customers prefer to purchase next generation devices over dispensable low-tech mobile viewers, giving content creators the opportunity to showcase more immersive experiences and the potential of the VR medium. As such, one can safely describe mobile as the weakest link in the market chain, with shipments falling by -11% to below 11 million units in 2019.

All-in-One headsets (AIO) also underperform in 2019, at least relative to early ear expectations. Such a shift in fortunes is primarily due to a change in market direction. Vendors are focusing on high-quality 6 degree of freedom (DoF) experiences, as opposed to the standard 3DoF interface responsible for the rapid mobile and AIO growth of 2017.

The global traditional PC-- meaning desktop, notebooks and workstations-- market closes 2019 with "impressive" Q4 2019 growth of 4.8% Y-o-Y, IDC reports, with shipments reaching 71.8 million units, the highest for a single quarter since Q4 2015.

As for overall 2019 global shipments are up by 2.7%, marking the first full year of PC growth since 2011.

"This past year was a wild one in the PC world, which resulted in impressive market growth that ultimately ended 7 consecutive years of market contraction," the analyst says. "The market will still have its challenges ahead, but this year was a clear sign that PC demand is still there despite the continued insurgence of emerging form factors and the demand for mobile computing."

The cloud gaming market is to ramp up in concert with the expansion of 5G and the arrival of new services, ABI Research says, bringing growth from both existing and new gamers moving to service fees instead of up front hardware costs.

The analyst predicts active cloud gaming users will total over 42 million by 2024, with overall market revenues growing to $4.5 billion at a CAGR of 61.7% for the 2018-2024 forecast period. However the cloud gaming market still represents a "relatively small" segment of the overall gaming landscape throughout the forecast.

“Google Stadia has brought a great deal of attention to cloud gaming, but the market has a deeper history and already has a growing list of companies operating in the space, serving both consumers and business customers, including telcos and pay-TV operators," the analyst says. "While technical and behavioral aspects of the market are in a much better place today, the greatest competitive hurdle remains the incumbent gaming platforms, which will lead to a more protracted transition to the cloud."

According to Futuresource Consulting the gaming accessory market remains firmly on a growth trajectory, with 2018 global shipments reaching 76 million units, a 22% increase over 2017, with revenues worth $3.1 billion.

The market covers headsets, speakers, keyboards and mice. Gaming headsets are the most poular category, accounting for around 50% of 2018 shipments as use-cases appeal to both console and PC gamers. The analyst attributes such growth to the surge in popularity of Battle Royale games, with the most famous examples being Fortnite and PUBG. The two games have both new and existing bases buying into the market, pushing sales up by 35% in unit terms and even more in value.

That said, Futuresource warns such growth will not see a repeat in 2019-- in fact, the analyst predicts a "minor" decline in shipments for the year, the result of cyclical games console hardware trends. The coming year should see headsets return to growth though, thanks to the 2020 launch of next-gen consoles, and in any case a strong gaming PC hardware market and the rapid increase in competitive mobile gaming should offset good part of the decline.

According to IDC, global consumer spending on technology is to reach $1.69 trillion in 2019, a 5.3% increase over 2018 brought about by strong purchases of both traditional and emerging technologies.

In fact, the analyst predicts spending will reach $2.06 trillion in 2023, with a 5-year CAGR for the 2019-2023 period of 5.1%. W. Europe is the 3rd largest geographic market in 2019 at $227 billion, following the US ($412bn) and China ($328bn). Mobile telecom services and mobile phones are the two largest categories in all three regions.

Traditional technologies account for around 75% of global 2019 consumer technology spending. Mobile telecom services (voice and data) make over 50% of the total throughout the forecast, followed by mobile phones and personal computing devices. Spending growth for traditional devices is relatively slow, with a CAGR of 2.2% over the 2019-2023 period.

EMEA gaming desktop and notebook shipments are down by -1.2% Y-o-Y to 1.9 million units, IDC reports-- but the analyst expects full-year 2019 shipments to reach 8.6m, a 1.5% increase, before growing to 11.1m by end 2023 with a CAGR of 6.8%.

IDC classifies gaming PCs as desktops or notebooks carrying a premium- or performance-grade GPU, including midrange and high-end offerings from Nvidia and AMD. The analyst excludes professional-grade GPUs such as the Quadro or Radeon Pro from the gaming PC definition.

W. Europe sees flat gaming PC results in Q2 2019, as shipments are down by a negligible -0.1% Y-o-Y. "Relatively strong" performance in countries including France and Italy offsets ongoing softness in confidence confidence brought about by political uncertainties such as Brexit. That said, gaming PC demand still outperforms the overall consumer market, and should further pick up in H2 2019 as more games make use of demanding technologies such as ray tracing.

According to Gartner, global shipments of devices-- namely PCs, tablets and mobile phones-- will drop by -3.7% in 2019, in good part due to consumers continuing to hold on to old their smartphones, leading to a -3.2% decline in sales.

The analyst estimates the number of mobile phones in use around the world clocks at around 5 billion. The global smartphone market has reached a tipping point, following years of growth, and the lifetimes of premium phones (running on iOS and Android) continues to extend through 2019. The quality and features of such devices has improved "significantly," and has reached a level where users see high value in their devices beyond a 2-year time frame. As a result, consumers will not upgrade unless it will bring about "significant" new utility.

In the meantime, the share of 5G-capable smartphones will increase from 10% in 2020 to 56% in 2023. Major phone vendors are looking to 5G as a replacement booster, but less than 50% of communications service providers (CSPs) will have a commercial 5G network in place over the next 5 years. So far around a dozen of providers offer 5G services in a "handful" of markets, and they need to emphasise the performance features of 5G (such as faster speeds, improved network availability and enhanced security) if they want to encourage the return of smartphone sales growth.

A demand-driven DRAM oversupply is to push prices down by -42.1% in 2019, Gartner reports-- and the oversupply is set to continue until at least Q2 2020, the result of slower demand recovery by hyperscale vendors and increasing inventory levels.

The result is the end of the longest period of undersupply for the DRAM industry.

The findings come from the Gartner report on the global semiconductor industry, one seeing revenues fall by -9.6% in 2019 to reach $429 billion. This is down from the Q1 2019 forecast of a -3.4% decline.

“The semiconductor market is being impacted by a number of factors. A weaker pricing environment for memory and some other chips types combined with the US-China trade dispute and lower growth in major applications, including smartphones, servers and PCs, is driving the global semiconductor market to its lowest growth since 2009,” Gartner says. “Semiconductor product managers should review production and investment plans to protect themselves from this weaker market.”