Slashdot Mirror
Michael Dell Dismisses Tablet Threat To the PC Market
alphadogg writes with an excerpt from a Network World article: "The PC is not likely to be challenged by the tablet or the smartphone, and many users of the Internet on these devices will turn to the PC for a better experience, Michael Dell said in Bangalore on Monday. If you were going off to college and could only have one device, you would choose the PC over a smartphone or a tablet, said Dell, whose company also sells smartphones. 'If you could have two devices, then you would probably choose the phone before the tablet,' the Dell CEO added."
You would probably want to shut it down and return the money to the stock holders.
Trying to do much REAL WORK(tm) on a tablet is an exercise in frustration. By the time you add a keyboard and mouse so that you can be even marginally productive you might as well get the tablet so that you can work even where/when there isn't a wireless network.
The tablet's niche is on the couch or the train or the bus.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Agreed. On the other hand, I imagine that a fair number of the tablets sold went to people who were thinking about buying a laptop/netbook as a second computer, but then opted for the tablet instead.
If you were going off to college and could only have one device,
Let's turn that around:
If you were home, which device would be the first to pick?
If you were at the beach, which device would you pick?
If you were on a train which device would you pick?
It is kind of obvious that PC is for work and tablet is for fun. No clear winner here.
Jerry Shen just Announced a Tegra 3 tablet with ICS for $250.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Tablets are not the threat to PCs. TVs are. The stuff they're showing at CES this year is not far off being able to slot right where the family PC used to be.
MICHAEL DELL
CEO and founder of Dell
From the time I was seven years old, I was captivated by blandness. When asked what kind of ice cream I wanted, the answer was always "Vanilla, please."
My favourite toy was an old sock that belonged to my grandfather. It was the most dull, lifeless white sock you had ever seen. I called it "Blandy". When I turned 13 my parents let me paint my room any colour I wanted. I picked a decidedly neutral beige paint. I didn't want any excitement in my room, just a calming dullness. My whole room was like that: beige walls, beige lampshades, beige bedding. The only contrast was when I would place Blandy on my pillow. My room was the ultimate in dull. Sitting in it was almost like floating in a sensory deprivation tank. Except you could see that glorious beige everywhere.
What are your memories of your first computer?
I bought my first computer when I was fifteen. It was a Radio Shack TRS-80. The silver-grey painted chassis caused too much excitement in my otherwise dull bedroom so I spray painted it beige. The cassette tape's door was a shiny bit of transparent plastic, far too eye catching. I used some 120 grit sandpaper to take off the glossiness. You couldn't read the tape labels through it after that, but I didn't care. It was a small price to pay in my quest for supreme dullness.
What modern technology do you wish you had growing up and why?
I've learned that technology on its own isn't what really matters. What's important is how dull it is. How you can get someone to spend their hard earned money on something then look at it and wonder "Why did I buy that?" To me, making items that has people doing just that, even before they receive their order confirmation, is the greatest thing ever.
Companies that go for excitement and innovation are certain to die. They have no future. Why, if it were up to me, I'd sell whatever company it was and give the money back to the shareholders. Printed on dull, beige cheques.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
It's insane to say that the PC is dying because people aren't buying new ones. Maybe (just maybe) people are happy with, and are using, the PCs they already have. That's not "dying", that's simply market saturation.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I think this guy is missing the point. The web is changing to make the experience on tablets and smartphones better. He seems to think that the internet is not going to change to adapt better to what people actually want to use, and it seems pretty clear that there are a fair number of people who would prefer to be using their phones or tablets than lugging around a laptop or taking up valuable home real estate with a desktop. If I can go to the library or a coffee shop or any other place with wireless and use the same interface, apps and files that I can use anywhere else, why would I want to use a PC? It seems like most web devs are working hard to make their sites more compelling on non-PC devices, so to assume that PCs have, and will have, a "better experience" is really rather shortsighted, imho.
From Kodak's 2002 Annual Report:
Our traditional film business is sound as digital imaging continues to evolve.
That was 10 years ago. The typical end-user desktop/notebook world probably has a similar life left. Just as a few specialty photographers still need film, there will always be niche professionals that need high-end desktop or notebooks, but most end users won't.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Not a desktop PC.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
As soon as the apps I need are available and can be reasonably manipulated on a tablet, the laptop will be dead to me. Moreover, a tablet with sufficient resources could easily take the place of my PC, with *at most* a docking station.
Michael will continue to be right for awhile, but inevitably at some point he will be wrong. Hopefully (in my opinion) soon.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
he also continued, "And if you could have three devices, well, let's just say that none of them will be a Dell."
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Sounds like he's got the same problem most other giants have had at some point, just before they start gong down hill. They refuse to acknowledge the changing tide around them, and are unable ( unwilling ) to adapt.
The first step is denial.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Exactly. As somebody above said, any PC made in 2006 is more than powerful enough to do almost anything other than play the latest bleeding-edge games. Aside from gaming and other extreme-performance, there is no longer a credible excuse to keep shoving the latest specs up the average consumer's ass.
Incidentally, I have 2 Dell computers I bought refurbished originally manufactured in 2004(laptop) and 2005(desktop) that I bought for a couple hundred dollars each, and both with linux installed perform superior to more recent Windows systems with security suites. I love showing off the fancy Compiz effects to Mac users while telling them that my whole desktop setup cost only 400$ including a new name-brand 23" flatscreen.
The PC IS dying. Gamers moved to consoles,
Steam has grown 100% a year for seven years running.
At home, people frankly don't need PCs anymore. At work? Yes.
My mother, nope - doesn't need a PC. All she does it surf the internet and check her email. Pages is more than enough if she needed to write a word document.
If my grandparents needed a device? I'd get them a tablet. There is simply nothing they do that would require a PC. Email, photos? All through a tablet.
I don't see most of the population needed a PC anymore, it is simply too much for anything they would ever do.
Not to say there isn't a need for a PC market, but IMO that market is much smaller than most think.
People like me are probably keeping Michael Dell up nights: I bought a tablet instead of upgrading my computer this year.
... so I bought an Asus Transformer tablet instead.
I've been thinking about upgrading my over 5-year-old home-built computer for a few years now - I generally will do one computer upgrade a year. AMD Athlon X2 5000+, 2 GB RAM. Put 64 bit Windows 7 on it a few years ago - even though the conventional wisdom is that 64 bit Windows 7 needs 4 GB RAM, it ran fine on 2 GB for my needs. Last year I replaced my boot drive with an SSD, and that was a huge speed boost. Thought about upgrading the whole thing to a new quad core with 8 GB RAM, but then decided my computer wasn't really slow enough to justify that
Love the tablet. I'll probably go another year or two until I upgrade my computer. The thought of this kind of thing probably scares the HELL out of Michael Dell (not that I've ever bought a Dell, I always build my own, but you get the idea.)
IMO, it's not necessarily the rise of tablets only that is causing the decline in computer sales - it's the fact that computers have gotten fast enough and good enough that there doesn't seem to be any need to upgrade for years and years for the average person. Especially since Microsoft got spanked hard by the fact that Vista was so much more demanding on hardware than XP (I had to double my RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB to run Vista at a decent speed)...right when the economy tanked and people were looking to buy small cheap computers, and Vista couldn't run on any of the 1 GB RAM netbooks flooding the market at the time.
Microsoft learned their lesson, and Windows 7 ran FASTER on the same hardware as Vista, and about the same speed as XP. Now that Microsoft is so obviously aiming Windows 8 at tablets, Michael Dell is probably crapping his pants, because the growing hardware requirements of Windows seems to be at an end...at least for the time being.
This could end up in the same museum as "No one will ever want a computer in their house" (Ken Olsen), "The world only needs 7 computers", and "640K memory will always be enough". It's a bad idea to make long-term generalizations based on the first release of a new form factor.