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End of the horizon for PCs as the sun rises for smartphones and tablets

End of the horizon for PCs as the sun rises for smartphones and tablets

IDC nearly gave a funeral oration to our beloved PCs in a recent report … and no one cried. Businesses, manufacturers, media and consumers were all brutally silent. Does this mean that they won’t miss the PCs? Don’t you remember how they furiously defended PCs when netbooks hit the market? Where’s the loyalty gone? Why have they switched sides this time? Perhaps it’s because never before in history has the mobile device market grown so aggressively.

IDC predicted in December 2010 that the shipments of smartphones, tablets, and other app-enabled devices would overtake PC shipments within the next 18 months, but it seems like the fall of the PC era is coming faster than expected. Quarterly smartphone sales surpassed PCs for the first time in history. According to IDC, there were 100.9 million smartphones shipped in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to 92.1 million PC units. Smartphones are up by 87.2% on a year on year comparison, and this as opposed to a scanty 5.5% rise for the PC market.

John Dvorak from MarketWatch says, “This industry is dead in the water. But nothing shines like a hot PC industry. It’s like a bull market. All the ships rise in the sea at once. Well, that hot market is never going to return and there will be no rising sea.”

Gartner predicted a 17.9% rise for PC sales in 2010, but then the iPad happened and Gartner had to eat its words. So this time Gartner has been a little careful with its 2011 predictions, tipping a subtle 15.9% rise in sales instead of the previous estimate of 18%. The stats are not heartwarming, but not declining either. IDC has predicted 12% annual growth rate for the PC market, to reach 630 million units by 2015, that’s a decent growth rate.

George Shiffer, an analyst at Gartner, bluntly argues that the PC market’s inability to innovate is to blame for the sluggish growth: “PCs are still seen as necessities, but the PC industry’s inability to significantly innovate and its overreliance on a business model predicated on driving volume through price declines are finally impacting the industry’s ability to induce new replacement cycles.”

But Dirk Meyer, CEO and president of AMD is betting on PCs as the ultimate way to handle the huge content requirement of users, “There is growing global appetite for multimedia content created, edited and enhanced on PCs. That content is consumed downstream by any number of devices. Video–the lingua franca of the global village–will comprise 90% of all Internet traffic by 2013, according to Cisco. Right now, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. More than 1,000 pictures are uploaded to Facebook every second. 3-D films and gaming will soon be mainstream–a disruptive opportunity for the PC industry.”

But smartphones and tablets are quickly adapting to the content demand. Internet surfing is no longer limited to just desktop PCs or laptops; consumers are increasingly moving to mobile devices. Emails and chats are no longer dependant on desktop applications; they are already replaced by mobile email clients, Facetime and Skype apps. There are even apps that allow you to write and edit documents, spreadsheets, PDFs and poerpoint presentation on mobile devices.

Manufacturers are piling up iPods, smartphones and tablets with storage capacity, and they can now carry your complete music collection. Casual gamers are more comfortable on the gaming apps and hardcore gamers are switching to powerful gaming consoles. eBooks and online magazines are now widely available on e-readers and through e-reader apps on smartphones and other mobile devices. Smartphones have even replaced cameras for quick unfussy photography that produces increasingly good quality images.

Apple launched iPad last year with 256MB RAM and 1GHz processor, but all subsequent iPad contenders have more than quadruple memory and dual core processors inside. Many smartphones at CES 2011 debuted dual core processors, which are as powerful as PCs and can be used for watching movies or doing HD gaming. Soon there will be no boundaries for the storage and memory needs of consumers living in this multimedia age.

The technology has rapidly moved from text based machines, mice and keyboards to touchscreen devices that have suddenly made PCs looks gigantic and antique. Smartphone-tablet mania is sweeping the world and there continues to be an inevitable shift towards interactive computing. The majority of users don’t actually need high end desktops, they just need to surf a little, check a few emails, watch a few videos and hang out on social networking sites.

It’s not the end of the line for the PC market, but there is certainly a shift that is ticking in favor of smartphones, teblets and other mobile devices. Duncan Stewart, director of Deloitte Canada Research says: “Like kids in a candy store, consumers and enterprises will be excited, yet overwhelmed by the sheer variety of options available to them… With PCs, netbooks, tablets and smartphones, buyers must choose among a wide array of functionalities, platforms, operating systems, sizes, features and price points.”

It’s too premature to declare the death of PC now; but netbooks, smartphones and tablets PCs have all have enhanced the way we are computing. PCs aren’t going anywhere just yet; we  still need them for high end video and photo editing and animation tools, for those who have huge content needs, need massive processing power, and of course for developers. But their significance will decline due to our craving for connected devices and for convenient mobile computing.

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August 26 2011 Antique Auction

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