If you think technology is leaving you behind, take a look at these five, top-selling must-have gadgets that have entered the market since 2000. You don't have to be a technogeek to appreciate any of these nifty devices, and you don't have to be a millionaire to own one, either!
Fastest Selling Electronic Device Of All Time
This one goes to the Apple iPad. First introduced in 2010, the Apple iPad has taken the gadget world by storm. Earlier this year, Apple announced that the iPad had become the fastest-selling electronic device of all time, and the company expects to sell more than 100,000,000 units by the end of 2012. The device has already undergone one major redesign in its scant 15 months on the market, and analysts are already talking about an iPad 3 release that could happen as early as the fourth quarter of 2011. Rumors abound regarding what the iPad 3 might potentially offer, and range from retinal scanning to HD displays to the e-commerce darling, near-field communications.
Best Selling Game Console
If you love gaming, then the PlayStation 2 is probably in your possession. To date, the beloved gaming platform has sold more than 150 million units worldwide since its introduction in 2000. The PS2 has moved more than 13.6 million units per year. The PS2 can't lay claim to being the fastest-selling game console, though. The handheld Nintendo DS gets the prize for speed, selling nearly 21 million units per year since its introduction. Where do the Wii and the Xbox 360 fall out? 17.2 million units per year for the Wii and just 9.1 million units per year for the Xbox 360. The fortunes of the Xbox 360 could change, however, with the addition of the Kinect system, which has been flying off the shelves at a much faster pace than heavyweights like the iPhone.
Who Sells The Most Phones?
The prize for the most widely deployed mobile phone goes to Nokia, for its 1100. The Japanese cell phone giant has sold more than 250 million units worldwide on this particular model and is, hands down, the winner in the cell phone sweepstakes. In comparison, the Apple iPhone (which isn't really comparable, except in the number of units sold) has sold more than 100 million units since its introduction in 2007.
Forget Phones. Who Sells The Most Smartphones?
The answer isn't so easy on this question, but the experts at Gartner predict that nearly 475 million smartphones will be sold worldwide in 2011. That's a huge jump in sales and will cement the smartphone's place in the Gadget Hall of Fame. Initially, many smartphones used the Symbian OS, but sales of Google's Android OS have put it on top of the smartphone world. Research in Motion (RIM), purveyors of the ever-venerable BlackBerry devices, are sitting in second place and Apple currently occupies the third spot in terms of OS market share. Microsoft, which currently holds about 3.5% of the smartphone market, expects that number to shift to about 20% by 2015. The jury is still out on the smartphone leader, but if consumer sales are any indicator, the smartphone is here to stay.
Best-selling E-Readers
The prize goes to…who knows?! Major e-reader manufacturers don't divulge hard numbers in terms of sales figures, but coyly prefer to indicate that their sales are "up." Experts estimate that Barnes and Noble's Nook is outselling the Amazon Kindle by better than 2:1, but since neither Barnes and Noble nor Amazon will use figures more precise than "millions" it's tough to award this prize at all. In fact, some experts have speculated that Sony may be the top contender in the e-Book market, having sold about 800,000 devices in 2010.
Jenni Lee is a recent graduate of a new york beauty school, but she loves to freelance and loves technology. Some of her favorite sites to get daily geek news is engagdet and gizmodo.