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EngadgetHD: This is an older report by Gartner that just caught our eye, but we just found the news so refreshing — and predictable — that we couldn’t pass it up. The long and the short of the $500 report is that H.264 has finally won the codec competition and that in the next few years everything will be encoded with it.

Although this makes sense to standardize on a codec going forward, it is hard for us to imagine over-the-air broadcast TV changing from MPEG-2 in the next four years.

While it is true that H.264 has been part of the ATSC spec for a few years now, with all that equipment out in the field already it is hard to imagine much of it getting replaced again in the next 10 years, never the less the next four.

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ZDNet: The global PC industry will suffer its ‘sharpest decline in history’ in 2009, as overall demand for PCs falls by 11.9 percent compared with 2008, according to analysts at Gartner.

The new low beats the previous record decline of just 3.2 percent, which took place in 2001. According to a statement from Gartner, both emerging and mature markets are forecast “to suffer unprecedented market slowdowns”.

The worst previously recorded performance in emerging market PC sales was growth of 11.1 percent in 2002, but in 2009 they will see contraction of 10.4 percent.

Mature market sales had a record fall of 7.9 percent in 2001, but this year they will fall by 13 percent, Gartner said.

One relatively bright spot has been the success of netbooks, which are forecast to total 21 million units in 2009 — almost double the 2008 figure of 11.7 million.

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PC World: Economic woes slashed cell-phone sales growth in the third quarter of this year as consumers waited longer to replace their handsets, and the market is likely to contract next year, according to Gartner.

The global slowdown affected sales in both rich and poor countries, though results varied around the world. Western Europe and Japan were hit hardest, with unit sales below those of a year earlier. Handset sales worldwide grew 6 percent in the third quarter, less than half the 16 percent growth that took place in the third quarter of 2007, according to Gartner. Unit shipments of phones grew to more than 308.5 million in the quarter from 291.1 million in the third quarter of 2007.

The news will be yet more grim in 2009, when Gartner expects worldwide unit sales to decline between 1 percent and 4 percent from 2008. New users still flocked to cell phones in the third quarter, but sales of replacement phones were hit hard, the company said.

Emerging-market gains drove up sales in Eastern Europe but sales in Western Europe were down, from 47.2 million to 43.5 million. Motorola suffered most among the major manufacturers, seeing its sales fall from nearly 38 million units to less than 25 million, and its market share drop to 8 percent from 13 percent.

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PC Retailer: Global internet protocol television (IPTV) services are set to reach 19.6 million subscriptions this year, an increase of 64.1 per cent over last year, according to Gartner.

Furthermore, projected revenues of $4.5 billion (3.1 billion Euro) for 2008 represent a 93.5 per cent increase in income over 2007.

Western Europe currently represents the largest proportion of IPTV subscribers with 8.2 million expected this year.

“The biggest change since 2007 is the rapid advent of new entrants making inroads in consumer video consumption and placing greater demands on IPTV operators to innovate,” said Gartner’s research director Elroy Jopling.

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Guardian: The smartphone market is a hard one to track because of devices sold under a wide variety of names, and because research firms have different definitions of smart phones. It’s also subject to change when new products take off (like the Apple iPhone) or fade. In other words, don’t bet your house on anybody’s “real” market share.

Still, according to Gartner, Nokia is still by far the market leader with 47.5% of the smartphone market on 15.2m units sold to users. RIM has done well with BlackBerry sales growing by 126.4% to 5.6m units, year over year, and it has now overtaken Windows Mobile.

Apple did not star in this quarter because it was in a product transition. Gartner comments: “in the second quarter of 2008, Apple’s share of global smartphone sales to end users decreased to 2.8% from 5.3% in the first quarter of 2008. The significant drop in sales was mainly due to the company having to clean the channel of first-generation iPhone units before the arrival of the iPhone 3G in June”.

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MarketWatch: Worldwide sales of mobile phones rose 12% in the second quarter, research group Gartner said Wednesday.

Sales of handsets in the mature markets of Western Europe and North America slightly recovered after a difficult start. Western Europe reached 42 million units and North America surpassed 44 million units.

Still, Gartner said that the economic environment continued to hurt mobile phone sales in both mature and emerging markets. Among the mobile-phone makers Nokia top dog with a market share of 39.5%.

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PC World: A weakening global economy will soon cause consumers worldwide to slow spending on electronics products, a Gartner analyst warned on Monday.

“In coming months we expect to see signs of a widespread slowdown in the electronics sector, which would directly impact semiconductor sales,” said Richard Gordon, analyst at Gartner, in the market researcher’s Semiconductor Monday DQ Report. The chip industry likely won’t start to recover until the second half of next year.

The impact of the credit crunch on the U.S., and to some degree European, housing markets, along with high energy prices directly hurting consumers, will lead to slower spending on electronics gear, he said.

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PC World: In the aftermath of a second quarter that saw sales fall compared to last year, Sony Ericsson on Tuesday announced three new Walkman phones.

But Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner, isn’t convinced more music phones are what’s needed to change Sony Ericsson’s fortunes.

“I think Sony Ericsson needs to revamp its portfolio. Imaging and music are now offered by everybody and on the application side GPS and browsing are getting hotter. It needs to make sure they have a rich offer there too if they want to remain competitive,” said Milanesi, who also thinks the company needs to improve design and user interface.

Sony Ericsson thinks the criticism is unfair and says that, in fact, it already has a wide portfolio that isn’t too reliant on the Walkman and Cyber-shot line, according to Nordic public-relations manager Gustaf Brusewitz.

“We have, for example, introduced the G700, G900 and K660, which are more Web-oriented,” Brusewitz said.

It has also introduced the F305, a gaming phone, and the Windows Mobile-based Xperia X1.

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EETimes: Nokia posted a 61 percent drop in second-quarter profits, mainly due to restructuring costs related to the closure of its plant in Bochum, Germany, but reported a reassuring increase in sales and shipments.

Shares in the company on the Helsinki exchange rose on the news, especially as the company slightly raised its forecast for the rest of the year, easing fears that economic woes would hit mobile phone demand.

Nokia said mobile phone volumes would grow 10 percent or more in 2008, having suggested three months ago that the value of the handset market will shrink in euro terms in 2008.

Earlier this month, Gartner cut its 2008 forecast for global mobile phone sales, bringing its forecast in line with Nokia’s predictions. Gartner now forecasts the market will grow 10 percent to 11 percent this year, down from a previous prediction of as much as 15 percent growth.

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PC World: Mobile gaming is set to carve out a niche market for itself, despite currently lagging in popularity behind other value-added entertainment services like music, according to Gartner.

The research firm expects global mobile gaming revenue to reach US$4.5 billion in 2008, up 16.1 percent from US$3.9 billion in 2007.

“Although current consumer interest in, and usage of, mobile gaming is generally low, the potential for market growth remains lucrative,” says Gartner’s principal analyst Tuong Huy Nguyen. “The market is skewed towards lower-income segments, mobile workers, and smartphone and personal digital assistant users.”

Nguyen attributes the healthy growth rate to “the fact that mobile gaming provides good value for money”. He adds that consumers, especially those in emerging economies where console and PC penetrations are lower, can enjoy a mobile game repeatedly for a relatively small price.

“Game publishers and mobile operators are also getting better at working together and becoming more active in the mobile gaming space,” Nguyen says.

According to Gartner, global mobile gaming revenue will register a compound annual growth rate of 10.2 percent between 2007 and 2011.

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IntoMobile: With the highly-anticipate and quite polarizing Apple iPhone on the verge of making its second-generation debut this week, a new research report from Gartner has surfaced. The report puts Apple, with just a single iPhone model to boast of, in the No. 3 spot among global smartphone vendors for Q1 2008. Cupertino took broke into the “Top 3″ in the smartphone market with 1.7 million iPhones sold since it’s debut last year.

Nokia took an astounding 45.2% (14.58 million units) of global smartphone sales, with RIM, makers of the ever-popular push-emailing BlackBerry lineup, garnering 13.4% (4.31 million units) of all smartphone sales.

Compared to the same period last year, smartphone sales grew 29%, with 32.2 million smartphones sold in the first quarter. The growing market didn’t just help Apple, Nokia saw a 25.3% growth in smartphone sales in Q1. But, the most remarkable growth numbers belong to RIM – the BlackBerry maker increased smartphone sales by 107.3%.

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Forbes: Cellphone sales in Western Europe fell sharply in January-March as the economic slowdown hurt demand, but robust growth in emerging markets such as Asia and Africa more than offset the fall, Gartner said on Wednesday.

The 16.4 percent fall in Western European sales — the first decline since the research firm started tracking the market in 2001 — hit Sony Ericsson hardest as its range has the highest proportion of pricier handsets in Europe.

The cellphone industry has been speculating about the scale of declines in European sales since Sony Ericsson shocked the market with March’s profit warning due to soft European demand. European market leader Nokia said its sales volume in Europe rose 7.5 percent in January-March, but cited possible economic slowdown in Europe as one of the reasons for cutting its market growth forecast.

Nokia is less exposed to European demand as it has a far stronger position in emerging markets.

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