Gartner: I’m amused when a mar­ket research firm like Gartner states what will hap­pen in 2016. I’m will­ing to bet Gartner’s pre­dic­tions 24 months or more into the future has less than a 10 per­cent accu­racy. For exam­ple, Gartner pre­dicted in 2011 that Microsoft would be sell­ing 68 mil­lion smart­phones in 2012. In Q3’12 Microsoft sold four mil­lion world­wide. Even if we assume sales dou­ble in Q4’12, Gartner’s pre­dic­tion was more of a wild guess. Perhaps Gartner is bet­ter at pre­dict­ing TV trends?

According to GfK, China has the high­est smart TV pen­e­tra­tion of 44 per­cent fol­lowed by South Korea (18 per­cent), and India (17 per­cent). I pre­fer “dumb TVs” but per­haps I’ll change my mind when/if Apples does its thing with TVs.