Smartphones and tablets remain the growth engine of the high-tech sector

The market for consumer electronics hopes to rebound this year, but it is mostly mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets that will take their game, according to an inventory compiled sector Sunday.

Global spending phones, TVs and other computing devices expected to grow by 4% to $ 1,100 billion, estimated the industry association and CEA research firm GFK, two days before the opening in Las Vegas the annual exhibition sector International CES.

In 2012, they had retreated 1% sealed in particular the sluggish economy in developed countries where expenditure more or less stagnate (1% on average, and even 1% in Western Europe).

The growth will be driven by emerging markets, particularly in Asia, which would see their costs increase by 9% to $ 490 billion (44% of the world).

If the global rebound looks overall "modest", some segments of the market are "explosive," noted Steve Bambridge, an analyst from GFK, during a press conference.

More than half of sales concern and mobile devices that connect to the internet: laptops, but also smartphones and tablet computers whose growth is expected to reach 22% and 25%.

"Tablets and smartphones dominate the landscape of consumer electronics regardless of where you look in the world," said Steve Koenig, an analyst at CEA. In emerging countries, sales benefit the wider range available, including less expensive models.But this enthusiasm is partly at the expense of other products: the consumer will for example not to buy another TV and opt instead for a tablet, or go camera because it believes that the smartphone is enough the case."It is true that there is some measure of cannibalization" of other market segments, "but these innovative products have also helped to transform the market and accelerate its growth," said Mr. Bambridge.Shawn Dubravac, another analyst of the ECA, and noticed that under the influence of tablets including the design notebooks, which had changed very little over the last twenty years, was changing.For him, one of the trends that should emerge from CES, it is "the different forms taken by the computer," with "experiments" manufacturers offering hybrid devices between your computer and tablet screens that can rotate , turn ..."We are entering the era of post-smartphone", also predicts Mr. Dubravac which says that the phone is less to call and increasingly to other uses.As the tablet, it becomes more and more an interface for uses beyond the simple communication, with a bunch of applications and services that develop around, and that the ESC should be a showcase.In the area of ​​health, for example, several exhibitors plan to present for devices that are voltage or pulse of the user, and then automatically transmit data to a mobile application.