The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid

hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting article on how this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance. Their argument is that tablets are going to disrupt the PC, and these tablets are predominantly going to be running on Google's Android powered by ARM processors — 'Armdroid.' Quoting: 'Both Microsoft and Intel have suffered from the same problem that most successful companies face when dealing with disruption. They cannot find a way to profitably invest in low-end offerings. Think about it from Microsoft's point of view: now that Windows 7 has been developed, to sell another copy, they don't have to do a single thing. Because of this, it becomes very hard for any executive to advocate the complete development of a low cost OS that will run on tablets: not only would it cost Microsoft a lot to develop, but it would result in cannibalization of its core product sales. Intel has the exact same issue. Why focus on Atom, or an even lower-end chip, when there is so much more margin to be made by focusing on its multi-core desktop processors?'"

Comments

A Few Logical Problems

[eldavojohn]

About Microsoft's first foray into the tablet market the article says:

Their tablet should have been about disrupting the PC market with something light, cheap and simple. Instead, Microsoft tried to make it do everything.

Okay, so we establish that tablets have a subset of functionality as PCs. I agree with this, I don't do software development, word processing or gaming on a tablet. But then the article notes that tablets herald the end of PCs. So are we expecting the software makers to bridge that gap that prevents me from playing World of Warcraft, writing a book in Word or LibreOffice, coding in Radrails, etc? I just don't see that happening. I think there's a fundamental hardware issue with capacitive touch. I am not certain it will ever get to the point where I feel comfortable doing serious work or serious gaming using a glassy surface as my input device. Maybe I'm getting old but I just have never been impressed with even the latest cellphone displays and their response.

I would speculate that most tablet users are first PC users at home and at the office. The tablet is a subset of the desktop computer and it's hard to reach all levels of functionality with only a tablet. So I would almost argue that tablets will bite into the PC market only in markets with people who just need a computer to surf the internet, play casual games and maybe e-mail. In my opinion, it's highly likely that Wintel and Armdroid will continue to coexist for many years with different functional targets.

this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance

There's potential but if you counted all the Wintel machines in use right now and all the Armdroid devices in use right now, I would bet Wintel would retain dominance in numbers. It's fun to get exited when it makes sense to you that this should happen but the reality is that Wintel still sits comfortably above a throne of untouchable marketshare.

Re:A Few Logical Problems

[Zouden]

Indeed. Here's my prediction: in 5 year's time, most people will still be using desktops/laptops running Windows on an Intel chip. The rise of tablets really isn't going to disrupt things as much as columnists like to claim. But "Status Quo to Remain Unchanged!" is not a very compelling headline.

Re:A Few Logical Problems

[falsified]

No! This is completely untrue!

Copy a few cells in your favorite spreadsheet program, then paste those cells into your favorite word processor, in a tablet. Format it with headers in a different font and color. Then, do that at a desktop computer with keyboard and mouse. Which was easier?

I know that tablet technology is rapidly changing, but once you have a big enough screen to capably handle windowing, you've basically got a laptop without a keyboard, not a tablet. And who wants that for business use?

If you don't canabalize your own business

[pcause]

The first rule of technology is that "If you don't canabalize your own business, someone else will do it for you". This is the classic tech product/company dilemna and we have lots of examples of dominant #1's who ignored this rule and are gone. Digital? Wang? Visicorp? Borland?

Re:If you don't canabalize your own business

[vlm]

The first rule of technology is that "If you don't canabalize your own business, someone else will do it for you". This is the classic tech product/company dilemna and we have lots of examples of dominant #1's who ignored this rule and are gone. Digital? Wang? Visicorp? Borland?

How about IBM's mainframe dominance in the very early microcomputer era?

The pity of it, was looking at something like DECs PDP-8 offerings, DECs multi kilodollar software kicked butt over microsoft ROM basic in a typical home PC. Microcomputers beat DEC on hardware, DEC utterly smashed microcomputers in software depth and quality, but DEC wanted like $3000 for a fortran compiler.

I think one factor of the "wintel" vs "armdroid" not discussed is the typical cost of software is, once again, imploding. The fact that the hardware and underlying OS is nice, but, much like DEC PDP-8 vs the apple II, most people will switch because the software is cheaper (not because its better) Despite not personally finding angry birds to be very entertaining, I do understand that its a bit cheaper than civ 5. Doesn't matter how much they're different, because they both do the same thing, that being wasting time, so the cheaper one will win.

Which is too bad, because I like the fancy stuff.