IDC: Samsung and Apple are driving holiday sales

Once again, Samsung and Apple are the big winners in the quarterly Worldwide Connected Smart Device report. Combined shipments of PCs, tablets and smartphones grew a healthy 27.1% year over year in the third quarter of 2012 according to IDC -- a total of 303.6 million devices worth $140.4 billion. But the growth was heavily weighted to the markets where Samsung and Apple dominate: smartphones and tablets. IDC expects more of the same this holiday season: tablet shipments in Q4 are expected to grow 55.8% and smartphones 39.5%, while PC shipments are expected to decline slightly from this quarter a year ago. In a set of stats that neatly sums up the competition between the two companies, IDC reports that Samsung maintained the top position in market share (21.8%) based on shipments, while Apple, which ranked second in shipments, led all vendors in the value of products shipped ($34.1 billion).