Yankee Group: Holiday shoppers are expected to snap up mobile devices en masse

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff

Mobile devices account for three of the top five devices that US consumers plan to buy this holiday season, according to a forecast from Yankee Group, a Boston-based research and advisory firm.

For the most part, this gadget boom will be powered by men, and particularly by younger men. One exception: E-readers such as the Amazon Kindle. Women outnumber men in their intention to purchase e-readers, Yankee Group said.

In a report titled, “Mobile Devices Reign Again in 2012 US Holiday Shopping,” Yankee Group said: “Mobile devices form the majority of the consumer electronic devices that holiday shoppers plan to buy this year. Young men are the primary forces behind the mobile devices boom, and their enthusiasm for smartphones and non-mobile HDTVs have pushed laptops down in the rankings.”

Yankee Group added that it expects this trend to usher the US consumers into a “post-PC era where tablets, not PCs, dominate consumer device ownership.”