The number of shipped consumer electronics devices with cellular connectivity grew to 22m in 2010, exactly double the 11m shipped in 2009, according to the analyst, Berg Insight. 
Notebooks is the most common device category to equip with cellular connectivity, but tablets, e-readers and PNDs (Personal Navigation Devices) are fast-growing categories as well. In the next five years, shipments of connected consumer electronics devices are forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 65.2 per cent, to reach 271m in 2015.

“The sheer availability of affordable devices with embedded connectivity has exploded during the last year, with substantial price reductions on connected personal navigation devices and popular e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Nobles Nook”, says Johan Svanberg, senior analyst at Berg Insight.

He adds that the Apple iPad caused the market for internet tablets to take off, and there were 17.1m tablets sold worldwide in 2010, of which 3.9m have cellular connectivity. Heightened consumer awareness, decreasing prices of modules and chipsets, together with massive global deployments of high speed cellular networks such as LTE will have a great positive impact on the market, the analysts believes.

“However,” says Svanberg, “there is a lot of work to be done when it comes to wireless data subscriptions, and a great deal of business innovation is needed in order to make embedded cellular connectivity a common feature in consumer devices.”