Consumer tech market will hit $2.1 trillion in 2012

Consumers worldwide are projected to spend some spend $2.1 trillion in 2012 on digital information and entertainment products, just as mobile phones, computing equipment, digital media and services, according to Gartner.

The Gartner projection for 2012 is $114 billion more than was spent in 2011, a growth trend the researcher expects will continue over the then and there five years. Gartner expects spending on consumer technologies and services will grow by $130 billion worldwide a year through 2016, when it projects that it will reach $2.7 trillion. "The three largest segments of the consumer innovation market are, and will continue to be, mobile services, mobile phones and entertainment services," said Gartner analyst Amanda Sabia in a statement.

The total consumer tech market in 2012

Mobile phones will account for 10% or $222 billion of the total consumer tech market in 2012. The total is expected to climb to nearly $300 billion by 2016.

Entertainment services, including cable, satellite, IPTV and online gaming is expected to grow from $210 billion this year to nearly $290 billion in 2016, according to Gartner.

"Nevertheless, our technology has as well found that consumers are willing to tolerate an ad-supported business model on the oher side of the coin for free functions and content just as personal cloud storage, social networking, information searching, email, IM, person-to-person voice, streaming/downloading video and musical content when accessing the Internet., she added.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian, or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

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