Here come the tablets and smart phones

The research firm IDC predicts that in 2011, computing’s third major technology wave will become mainstream, when computers held in one’s hand — smartphones and tablets — really take over and start putting personal computers in the rearview mirror.

Next year there will be 330 million smartphones sold worldwide and 42 million media tablets. Tablet sales are expected to more than double next year, and to keep climbing.

“The PC-centric era is over,” the IDC report says. Within 18 months, it forecasts, non-PC devices capable of running software applications will outsell PCs. In tablets, IDC adds, Apple’s iPad will remain the leader, but lower-cost tablets will begin making inroads, especially as demand for tablets really takes off in emerging markets.

Mainstream adoption, according to IDC, is when a technology moves well beyond 15 percent or so of the market. In 2011, for example, IDC predicts half of the 2.1 billion people who regularly use the Internet will do so using non-PC devices.