FILE – In this Aug. 25, 2011 file photo a lawyer holds an Apple iPad and a Samsung Tablet-PC at a court in Duesseldorf, Germany. The Duesseldorf state court ruled Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, that neither the South Korean company’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 nor the Galaxy Tab 8.9 could be sold in Germany because they were in violation of unfair competition laws. A German appeals court has upheld a decision prohibiting Samsung Electronics Co. from selling two of its tablet computers in Germany, agreeing with Apple Inc. that they too closely resemble the iPad2. (AP Photo/dapd, Sascha Schuermann, file)

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Global tablet sales reached 67 million units in 2011 and are expected to grow 38.8% annually to 248.6 million by the end of 2015, according to a new market report from Transparency Market Research. Led by Apple’s iPad, tablet sales increased 275.5% in 2011 from 17.8 million units sold in 2010. Smartphone sales in 2011 hit 468.9 million units, a 66.7% increase over 2010 sales of 282 million units, and sales are expected to reach 1.05 billion in 2015 with Asia accounting for 39.5% of the market. Smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2011 beat the combined sales from the full year of 2008, the report notes. The leap in sales was largely driven by consumer and enterprise adoption of the iPhone 4S, which shipped more than 36 million units in the quarter. Read on for Transparency Market Research’s press release.

Tablet Sales to End Users is Expected to Reach 248.6 Million Units by 2015, Smartphones Sales to End Users Will Reach 1,048.0 Million Units by 2015: Transparency Market Research

ALBANY, New York, February 8, 2012/PRNewswire/ –

According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research (http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com) “Tablet Market and Smartphones Market: Global Database & Forecast (2010 – 2015) [http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/tablet-and-smartphones-market.html ]“, Global Tablet sales to end users reached 67.0 million units in 2011 and is expected to reach 248.6 million units by the end of 2015, growing at a CAGR of 38.8% from 2011 to 2015. Asia – Pacific (including Japan) is expected to enjoy the highest share of overall global shipments and end user sales of Tablets at 36.1% and 35.3% respectively in 2015.

In 2011, Smartphone sales to end users reached 469.9 million units, registering a growth of 66.7% over 2010 sales of 282.0 million units. The Smartphone sales to end user are expected to reach 1,048.0 million units by 2015 with Asia – Pacific accounting for the largest market share at 39.5%. Asia Pacific is also expected to enjoy the highest growth rate at a CAGR of 36.3% from 2010 to 2015.

Browse the database at http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/tablet-and-smartphones-market.html

The Tablet sales to end user increased by 276.5% in 2011 from 17.8 million units sold to end users in 2010. Globally, the installed base of Tablet devices have reached 81.2 million units in 2011 and expected to reach 388.8 million units by the end of 2015. This represents approximately 45% replacement/loss rate by the same year.

Form factor plays crucial role in adoption of Tablet devices. Our research indicates that consumer purchased the largest number of Tablet devices with screen size ranging 8 Inch and 10 Inch; whereas devices weighed between 450g and 900g (1 lb – 2 lbs) had the highest share of overall sales of tablet devices. Consumer segment is the largest adopter of media Tablet devices, while business users prefer communicators. Media Tablets is expected to remain the largest Tablet device segment with over 60% sales share in 2015, while hybrid segment will account for more than one-fourth of the sales in the same year. Continue reading here [http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/tablet-and-smartphones-market.html ].

Smartphones are becoming more ubiquitous communication devices among all user segments with almost 75% of smartphone consumer (individual) subscriber use their smartphones for personal as well as business purposes. Moreover, 65% of global SMBs now allow employee owned smartphone for official use. This acted as the strong booster for Smartphone market growth. The smartphones market [http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/tablet-and-smartphones-market.html ] grew by 66.7% during last year and sales reached to 469.9 million units in 2011. Smartphone sale in 4Q2011 alone crossed the combined sales of all the four quarters of 2008. This leap in sales came on account of consumer as well as enterprise adoption of iPhone 4S, which posted 36.1 million units sales to end user in Q42011 alone. Continue reading here [http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/tablet-and-smartphones-market.html ].

This extensive database report covers quarterly sales to end users, installed base, revenue, ASP from 2009 to 2011 and forecast till 2015 for Tablets and Smartphones based on following segmentation.

Tablet Market Segmentation

- By Operating System

- iOS

- Android

- Windows

- Blackberry Tablet OS (QNX)

- By Vendors

- Apple

- Samsung

- HTC

- Dell

- RIM

- Amazon

- Motorola

- By Form Factors

- Weight

- Width

- Length

- Display Screen Size

- Thickness (depth)

- Users

- Business liable

- Consumer liable

- Personal Only

- Personal and Business

- Usability

- Media Tab

- Communicators

- Hybrid

- Geography

- North America

- Europe

- Asia – Pacific (including Japan)

- ROW

Smartphones Market Segmentation

- By Operating System

- Symbian

- iOS

- Android

- Windows Mobile

- Blackberry OS

- Bada

- By Vendors

- Nokia

- Apple

- Samsung

- HTC

- RIM

- By Form Factors

- Weight

- Width

- Length

- Display Screen Size

- Thickness (depth)

- Users

- Business liable

- Consumer liable

- Personal Only

- Personal and Business

- Usability

- Media Tab

- Communicators

- Hybrid

- Geography

- North America

- Europe

- Asia – Pacific (including Japan)

- ROW

- Input Type

- Touchscreen

- Keyboard

- Keypad

Amazon.com will begin to collect Indiana’s 7 percent sales tax from customers in 2014, which could bring an estimated $ 20 million in revenue to the state’s economy.

The online retail behemoth announced an agreement Monday with the Hoosier State. It which requires Amazon to collect Indiana’s sales tax from customers in that state beginning in 2014. The agreement also states that if federal legislation regarding the collection of taxes for online sales is passed before 2012, Amazon must begin to collect the sales tax within 90 days of the legislation’s passage.

The agreement stemmed from a lawsuit filed by brick-and-mortar shopping mall owner Simon Property Group against the state in November. Simon said in a statement that it is “pleased with the agreement” and it will drop the lawsuit.

“The only complete answer to this problem is a federal [government] solution that treats all retailers and all states the same,” said Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels in a statement Monday.

“But for now, Amazon has helped us address the largest single piece of the shortfall, and we appreciate the company working with us to find a solution,” said Daniels.

“Amazon, Governor Daniels, and legislative leaders chose to work together on jobs and investment in Indiana and to focus on resolving the sales tax issue by strongly supporting federal legislation,” Amazon spokesman Ty Rogers told The Daily Caller in an email.  ”As analysts have noted, Amazon offers customers the best prices with or without sales tax.”

The House Judiciary Committee examined the issue of online taxation in November. Grievances aired by state governments and brick-and-mortar retailers over the online retailers’ tax-collection habits ranged from lost state revenues to unfair competition practices. Online retailers argued that states should be “bear the cost” of supplying the software needed to properly collect taxes across the U.S.

The Indianapolis Business Journal reported that estimates on “Indiana’s uncollected online sales taxes range from $ 75 million to $ 250 million per year.”

Amazon, a Seattle-based company, is Indiana’s largest online retailer.

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Secularly speaking, Christmas is about three things: Engorging oneself at massive holiday dinners, sitting awkwardly with family members you only see annually, and the presents. Oh, yes, the wonderful, wonderful presents.

Topping this year’s smorgasbord of gifts, it seems, was the smartphone. More devices flooded into eager customers’ hands than in any previous holiday season.

Full Story: Smartphone Activations Hit Record Holiday Highs

U.S. shoppers spent 15 percent more in online holiday buying compared to last year, after what may have been the busiest week of the season, said research firm comScore on Sunday.

Shoppers have spent $ 30.9 billion online from Nov. 1 through Dec. 16, up from $ 26.9 billion at the same point last year, said the Reston, Va., company, which tracks Web use.

Online sales surpassed $ 1 billion on four days last week. Total sales for the week climbed 15 percent to $ 6.31 billion compared to last year.

The five days that ended on Friday “will almost certainly be the heaviest week of the online holiday shopping season,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. Online spending will begin to slow as Christmas draws closer, he said.

But “Cyber Monday,” the Monday after Thanksgiving, is still the largest online shopping day ever, according to comScore. Sales for that day rose 22 percent from last year to $ 1.25 billion. Cyber Monday sales topped $ 1 billion for the first time last year.

The holiday shopping season can make up to 40 percent of retailers’ annual revenue. The online sales data point to Americans’ growing comfort with using their personal computers, tablets and smartphones to shop for the holidays.

Discounting and promotions have also boosted shopping this year. ComScore said on Sunday that shoppers have received free shipping on at least half of all their purchases in each week of this year’s holiday shopping season.

In a full committee hearing Wednesday morning, the House Judiciary Committee explored several pending pieces of legislation that would give states permission to collect sales taxes on online purchases.

Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers complain that online merchants have an unfair advantage because the lack of state sales taxes amounts to a discount for online shoppers. Online-only retailers insist that if they are to collect sales taxes, states should foot the bill for the specialized tax-collection software that would be required.

“Today, bricks-and-mortar stores like ours are becoming the showrooms for online-only companies like Overstock, Amazon and eBay,” Dan Marshall, owner of Marshall music, Inc., told the House Committee.

Marshall testified on behalf of the Michigan Retailers Association. His business, based in Lansing, Mich., employs 300 full and part-time employees — a workforce down approximately 10 percent from peak employment “a few years ago,” he said.

State governments are exploring online sales tax as a way to combat spiraling budget deficits. Michigan, whose state sales tax rate is 6 percent, carried a $ 2.3 billion deficit for the 2010 fiscal year.

Texas state representative John Otto told the committee that instead of being forced to raise taxes, states should be able to collect taxes to which they are already entitled under existing law.

“Before I vote to increase a state sales tax that would only increase the current disparity between local and out of state retailers, it only makes sense to first collect the taxes states are already due,” said Otto.

Overstock.com chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne cautioned congressmen about the “burden of remote state sales tax collection” on online retailers who conduct business in one state but may be expected to collect taxes on behalf of 49 others.

“We oppose the pending bills because they ‘outsource’ to retailers, without compensation, the burden of collecting taxes from residents of states where those retailers have no physical presence nexus,” said Byrne.

He testified that “because tax collection is really a duty of states and not retailers, the states should be required to provide a truly plug-and-play affordable software solution.” Software like this, he added, requires “approximately $ 300,000 of investment and months of manhours” for Overstock staff to build.

“Implementation of this solution for the nation’s nearly 10,000 different taxing jurisdictions would be extraordinarily costly for companies like ours,” said Byrne. “So if states want to tax our sales to their residents when we have no physical presence there, they should bear the cost of supplying the software.”

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As momentum builds in favor of ensuring sales tax equity between Main Street businesses, which are required to collect state sales taxes, and many online-only retailers, which are not, a growing and bipartisan chorus of public officials and opinion leaders have voiced their support for new House and Senate measures to end this uncompetitive loophole. But that chorus does not include the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

It’s not that ALEC opposes the idea of tax simplification and fairness in principle. Indeed, in a recent Daily Caller op-ed by two ALEC representatives, “Revenue-Hungry Politicians Attack Online Sales,” they call the effort “laudable” and the goal “worthy.” Rather, their main objection appears to be that included in this bipartisan chorus supporting sales tax fairness are “revenue-hungry tax administrators, politicians and interest groups — all too excited to continue their never-ending quest for more state tax revenue.”

This view pits ALEC against folks such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who counseled his successor to consider pursuing tax fairness in the Sunshine State. “It seems to me there has to be a way to tax sales done online in the same way that sales are taxed in brick and mortar establishments. My guess is that there would be hundreds of millions of dollars that then could be used to reduce taxes to fulfill campaign promises,” Bush wrote to Gov. Rick Scott.

Whatever one thinks of Governor Bush, few people would characterize him as a “revenue-hungry” politician who is “all too excited to continue his never-ending quest for more sales tax revenue.”

Few would characterize South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in such a manner, either. Nevertheless, Governor Haley said the following during a press conference last spring, “Don’t ask us to give [Amazon] sales tax relief when we’re not giving it to the book store down the street or we’re not giving it to the other stores on the other side of town. It’s just not a level playing field.”

There is a reason conservatives have begun to recognize that “exempting Internet sales can no longer be justified,” in the words of Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU). The online sales tax loophole is an anti-competitive giveaway to some retailers at the expense of others. The government continues to pick winners and losers in the retail industry at the same time politicians and the public are coming to reject that kind of intervention in every other sector of our economy.

The Marketplace Fairness Act in the Senate and the Marketplace Equity Act in the House both enjoy bipartisan support. The two measures take slightly different approaches to achieving the goal of sales tax equity. ALEC claims that “small businesses would face substantial and costly compliance burdens under both bills,” but what small businesses are they talking about? The ones shuttered on barren Main Streets across the country, victims of an unfair tax regime that literally forced them to charge more for their products than their competitors?

As the father of modern conservatism William F. Buckley prophesied in 2001, “We have to come to earth, and face homespun economic truths. If the advantage of tax-free Internet commerce marginally closes out local industry, reforms are required.”

Ten years later, the nature of that reform is now obvious to a growing number of Americans. An October study conducted by the University of Cincinnati estimates that closing the sales tax loophole would create up to 11,000 retail jobs in that state. A Carnegie Mellon University study shows Pennsylvania could gain up to 3,000 new jobs. The same is true in state after state across the country.

Closing the sales tax loophole is about fundamental fairness and allowing states to enforce their own tax laws. It will result in more jobs and help our local economies recover. Conservatives understand the consumer should be picking winners and losers in the marketplace, not the government, and that’s what e-fairness is all about.

Stephen DeMaura is the president of Americans for Job Security.

As momentum builds in favor of ensuring sales tax equity between Main Street businesses, which are required to collect state sales taxes, and many online-only retailers, which are not, a growing and bipartisan chorus of public officials and opinion leaders have voiced their support for new House and Senate measures to end this uncompetitive loophole. But that chorus does not include the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

It’s not that ALEC opposes the idea of tax simplification and fairness in principle. Indeed, in a recent Daily Caller op-ed by two ALEC representatives, “Revenue-Hungry Politicians Attack Online Sales,” they call the effort “laudable” and the goal “worthy.” Rather, their main objection appears to be that included in this bipartisan chorus supporting sales tax fairness are “revenue-hungry tax administrators, politicians and interest groups — all too excited to continue their never-ending quest for more state tax revenue.”

This view pits ALEC against folks such as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who counseled his successor to consider pursuing tax fairness in the Sunshine State. “It seems to me there has to be a way to tax sales done online in the same way that sales are taxed in brick and mortar establishments. My guess is that there would be hundreds of millions of dollars that then could be used to reduce taxes to fulfill campaign promises,” Bush wrote to Gov. Rick Scott.

Whatever one thinks of Governor Bush, few people would characterize him as a “revenue-hungry” politician who is “all too excited to continue his never-ending quest for more sales tax revenue.”

Few would characterize South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in such a manner, either. Nevertheless, Governor Haley said the following during a press conference last spring, “Don’t ask us to give [Amazon] sales tax relief when we’re not giving it to the book store down the street or we’re not giving it to the other stores on the other side of town. It’s just not a level playing field.”

There is a reason conservatives have begun to recognize that “exempting Internet sales can no longer be justified,” in the words of Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU). The online sales tax loophole is an anti-competitive giveaway to some retailers at the expense of others. The government continues to pick winners and losers in the retail industry at the same time politicians and the public are coming to reject that kind of intervention in every other sector of our economy.

The Marketplace Fairness Act in the Senate and the Marketplace Equity Act in the House both enjoy bipartisan support. The two measures take slightly different approaches to achieving the goal of sales tax equity. ALEC claims that “small businesses would face substantial and costly compliance burdens under both bills,” but what small businesses are they talking about? The ones shuttered on barren Main Streets across the country, victims of an unfair tax regime that literally forced them to charge more for their products than their competitors?

As the father of modern conservatism William F. Buckley prophesied in 2001, “We have to come to earth, and face homespun economic truths. If the advantage of tax-free Internet commerce marginally closes out local industry, reforms are required.”

Ten years later, the nature of that reform is now obvious to a growing number of Americans. An October study conducted by the University of Cincinnati estimates that closing the sales tax loophole would create up to 11,000 retail jobs in that state. A Carnegie Mellon University study shows Pennsylvania could gain up to 3,000 new jobs. The same is true in state after state across the country.

Closing the sales tax loophole is about fundamental fairness and allowing states to enforce their own tax laws. It will result in more jobs and help our local economies recover. Conservatives understand the consumer should be picking winners and losers in the marketplace, not the government, and that’s what e-fairness is all about.

Stephen DeMaura is the president of Americans for Job Security.