Consumers Spending Over £500bn on Mobile, says Gartner

Handsets will account for 10 per cent of the mobile spend - $222bn in 2012, rising to $300bn by 2016

Consumer spend on mobile and mobile technologies in 2012 accounts for almost half of all technology spend, according to retail analysts Gartner - a whopping $0.8 trilion (£511bn). 

Overall, $2.1 trillion will be spent on computing, mobile phones, other smart devices, network services, software and media content in 2012.

"The three largest segments of the consumer technology market are, and will continue to be, mobile services, mobile phones and entertainment services," says Amanda Sabia, principal research analyst at Gartner. "There are two product classes, which in terms of absolute dollars are significantly smaller, but offer tremendous growth by 2016. These are mobile app stores, and eText content. We fully expect consumers to more than triple their spending in these latter two categories by 2016."

Gartner predicts that consumer spending on mobile apps stores and content will rise from $18bn in 2012 to $61bn by 2016, and that spending on e-text content - including e-books, online news, magazines and information services - will rise from $5bn to $16bn over the same period.