As the outlook for the personal computer seems to get worse with every release of new data, it’s looking like the PC could become tech’s next dinosaur.
It’s an interesting question to mull, especially after market research firm International Data Corp. predicted earlier this week that tablet shipments will surpass the growth of laptops and other portable PCs this year. In fact, they also expect that by 2015, tablets will outpace the entire PC market.
“There are hundreds of million of PCs out there so it’s not going to go the way of the mainframe,” said Bob O’Donnell, an IDC analyst. “We are seeing a transformation on what the PC is.”
The transformation, though, is not unlike what the mainframe went through in the 1970s and 1980s, when cheaper minicomputers arrived on the scene to challenge the huge systems known as “big iron.”
That was followed by the PC revolution, along with a shift to cheaper servers to run and store corporate data, causing further upset. Many of the mainframe companies went away, as did the later minicomputer makers. Digital Equipment Corp., the creator of the VAX minicomputer, for example, was bought by Compaq, which later merged with Hewlett-Packard Co.
Today, IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM) remains the dominant mainframe maker and has managed to reinvent the big system, once derided as a dinosaur by many, now still running a multitude of major corporations. But many of its rivals fell by the wayside.
As IDC’s numbers show, it is clear that PC business is going through a major upheaval, too, as cheaper, good-enough tablets and smartphones answer the computing needs of many. Investors need to start analyzing which companies are the fittest to survive.
Apple Inc., the company that popularized the MP3 player, smartphone and the tablet, is under the gun from investors, who are worried that the iPhone has stalled. But the company’s Chief Executive Tim Cook said at the D11 conference that the company has “more game changers coming” and that Apple is “incredibly interested in wearable computers.”
Some analysts believe wearable computing is the next big thing and in Silicon Valley, Google Glass has become a geek status symbol, although Cook believes that the Web-connected glasses are most likely to appeal to specific markets.
The trick for the survivors of the changing industry is to embrace the new, while maintaining the old. Many firms will embrace new forms of computing, be it tablets, smartphones, watches or glasses, but they must also maintain and update the legacy systems that will continue to be used by many in the corporate workplace or at home.
“For most people there is no replacement for the PC with a keyboard for business productivity,” O’Donnell said. “In business I certainly don’t see that changing.”
However, most don’t want or need to upgrade their PCs, at least right now. Instead, many are spending on buying tablets or smartphones as their extra device. The latest upgrade to Windows from Microsoft Corp., Windows 8, is not helping drum up interest in PCs, as it has in the past. The new user interface is geared toward touch screens — still rare on PCs — although touch still remains the way to work in tablets and smartphones.
“Microsoft created the impression that to properly run Windows 8 you have to have a touch screen and the price for touch screen [PC] systems is significantly above what consumers are willing to pay,” O’Donnell said. “The vast majority of people buying tablets already have PCs, they are buying the tablets in place of refreshing their PCs”
[Source: MarketWatch]
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