According to Gartner, more than two and a half billion devices, including smartphones, tablets and PCs, will be sold in 2015.

The latest report shows that the PC, as well as the tablet and Ultrabook market is expected to shrink this year, continuing a trend seen over the past several quarters. Gartner blames this slowdown mainly on the currency depreciation compared with the US dollar, a problem that has affected Europe, Russia, as well as parts of Asia and Latin America. Also to blame for the PC sales slump is Windows 10 itself, which is expected to prolong the lifetime of existing devices and lead to fewer sales once it launches later this year.

Meanwhile on the tablet and Ultrabook front, Gartner claims that lack of innovation and commoditization of these devices has led, and will continue to lead, to a slowdown of sales and prices.

Overall the PC market is expected to ship around 300 million devices this year, including devices like Apple’s MacBook Air. Adding in tablets and clamshells, Gartner reckons the market for computing devices will just reach half a billion units.

Meanwhile mobile phones are the only segment that are seeing real growth, with sales projected to be just shy of two billion units, up around 60 million compared to last year.

The research company’s estimates have been lowered compared to some of their previous reports, which had the overall market growing at 2.8 % compared to last year. However, as numbers currently stand, the market will have grown only 1.5 percent by year’s end.

That being said Gartner also estimated that device sales, including PCs and tablets, will pick up steam next year and could possibly fare even better in 2017.

Image courtesy of Daniel Bogan on Flickr!