PC Era Forecasted To End In 18 Months

dcblogs writes "In a historic shift, shipments of smartphones, tablets and other app-enabled devices will overtake PC shipments in the next 18 months, an event that may signify the end of the PC-centric era, market research firm IDC said. IDC said worldwide shipments this year of app-enabled devices, which include smartphones and media tablets such as the iPad, will reach 284 million. In 2011, makers will ship 377 million of these devices, and in 2012, the number will reach 462 million shipments, exceeding PC shipments. In 2012, there will be 448 million PC shipments. One shipment equals one device. PC sales will continue to climb, but will no longer rule."

Comments

Oh happy day

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

This will probably mean the end of Microsoft as well.
Likely the beginning of the Year of Linux on the desktop as well.

Re:Oh happy day

[Anthony Mouse]

Don't get your hopes up. They're talking about shipments, not installed base.

People pretty much stopped buying new PCs once they had a Core 2 Duo or faster. It isn't that no one is using PCs anymore, it's that no one is buying a new one because the old one is still plenty fast.

Incidentally, you can expect the same thing to happen in phones in a couple of years. Once you have a phone which is fast enough to play video and has a battery that lasts all day, the biggest improvements are going to come as software update and you won't care about the hardware any more than you currently care whether you have a 2.6GHz CPU vs. a 3GHz CPU -- both are fast enough to do whatever so nobody cares anymore.

I dunno, man

[Pojut]

Even if smartphones and such sell more than their larger counterparts, I still don't see it happening that quickly. There's still a lot to be said of the experience of using a "PC" rather than an "app device", regardless of the equal or disparate capabilities between them.

An example is writing...I'm not going to write on a bluetooh-keyboard-connected iPad for the same reason I wouldn't write on a netbook or a laptop; I need to feel centered, to feel like "OK body and mind, we're sitting down, and we're writing." I don't see being able to duplicate that feeling with an "app" device.

Re:I dunno, man

[ColdWetDog]

Yeah, but Pojut is doing it wrong. He's writing. He's not consuming. Content creation by anyone other that the Media (big M) is so last century and more to the point

- potential terrorist activity -

Grab those iPads, comrades!

Developer soup

[iONiUM]

While I'm all for new technology, we're also entering an era I like to call developer soup. Maybe I just coined that. In any case, there's no good way to target all the platforms anymore. You might argue HTML5, but really only Chrome is useful for that (right now), and many do not run Chrome. Many in fact, still use IE6/7/8 at corps.

It kind of stinks, because before you could make an app for one platform and hit a lot of targets, but not anymore.. Android, iOS, BBOS, Windows, Linux, Mac, MeeGo, the diversity is difficult, at best, if you want an all encompassing app. Ah well, I guess HTML4 for now, HTML5 in 18 months.

Where the Work Is Being Done

[Sonny Yatsen]

Until smartphones and tablets displace the PC in being the platform where most of the work is done, I don't consider the PC Era to be over.

Re:Hype

[GiveBenADollar]

I for one have three bikes at home and only two cars, does that mean that the era of the car is over at my house? I really tire of these slanted news articles that crumble with the slightest application of common sense.

I highly doubt this

[Stregano]

Tell that to the 10mil+ subscribers of WoW. With the new expansion getting released, WoW players are going nowhere. Tell the pro Starcraft players that as well. The average consumer doesn't use their pc much anyway, and most of that can be handled through their ps3 or phone now, so they might stop using it alot less.

What about college students? So, how are they going to type up their exams now. On a smartphone? I think it would be absolutely horrid to write a thesus using a phone. Ouch.

18-months? Really?

Now, I consider myself an avid pc gamer, and I have no plans to move away from that anytime soon, plus the 6 cores are starting to roll out in larger numbers. 3-D technology is getting implemented more and more into PC's (I believe it is NVidia who is doing a bunch of stuff with it).

The thing is that PC's can do so much more than a smartphone, and PC's are upgradable (not just software, but hardware) and it won't void your warranty (well I guess if you buy a PC from Dell or something it might since I don't know the rules with pre-made machines). The point is that as pc's evolve, you can easily evolve and adapt with the times by upgrading your PC. To do this with a smartphone means that you need to buy a new phone. Not all that smart if you ask me

Computerworld forecasted to grow brain: never

[billcopc]

This is such an idiotic statement. There are already far more cell phones sold, smart or not, per year than PCs, and this has been true for nearly a decade. These phones are being replaced with "app-enabled devices" because it's getting nearly impossible to get a plain old phone - they just don't make them anymore. Even the $0 freebie has some sort of smartphone-like functionality. Hell, my old MotoRazr from 2004 had apps! Shiit Java apps, but still...

The day you can sit down at an "app-enabled device" and professionally write software, code a business-class web site, edit video, design a mechanical blueprint, and play WoW, well that might be the end of the PC era. For now, and the next 10 years at least, we just have a lot of fussy gadgets.

Awesome

[Hatta]

I'm sick of being politically correct.

Consuming vs. Creating

[Toe, The]

More broadly: anything creative is better done on a computer than a tablet.

A tablet (etc.) is for consumption of content. They rock for accessibility and convenience: just what you need when you are passively consuming content, such as reading or watching. Even gaming counts, as you are not putting anything in to the device: just getting entertainment out of it.

But if you are trying to create something (prose, music, code, graphics, databases, and so on and so on), then a full-fledged computer is vastly superior.

Maybe this will change someday, as the interfaces for devices improve and the apps develop. But in the short-term, I defy someone to create billboard-quality graphics, commercial-grade websites, or a publication-level novel on a tablet. I suppose it can be done, but it would be a heck of a lot easier with a full computer.

Television example

[droidsURlooking4]

Considering buying a new HDTV right now. Many are 'Internet Ready" which means it runs "apps". For a smartphone I suppose "apps" make sense but when I can just a good monitor and put a small Eee pc behind it with hdmi, gigabit ethernet, basically the whole Internet and any "app" I want, those Internet Ready devices fall flat. Why would I limit myself to today's hyped snapshot of the Internet experience? I'll keep them in mind for my fridge though.

Re:Hype

[Hijacked Public]

Slashdot makes this same mistake every single time a story like this goes on the front page. Every time.

The report is from a marketing firm. Their audience is other marketing types who make reports to business types. That lot is concerned about growth because growth is where they can make money. Selling things in markets that are growing faster than competition can enter, which means profit margins can stay comfortably high.

Once growth falls off and capacity catches up, things get competitive. Margins dwindle and the kinds of companies that pay people to read marketing reports can no longer survive.

Re:Hype

[shadowfaxcrx]

Thank you.

Of course non-PC devices are selling faster than PC's right now. Almost everyone already has a PC, so there isn't a large group going out in the same time period to buy one. The same can't be said about tablets and smartphones.

Re:Hype

[Locke2005]

The car era will never be over because it's really hard to make out in the back of a bicycle. Likewise, the PC era will never be over because it's really hard to fap to a video on a 4 inch screen.