I was listening to the Guardian Tech Weekly podcast this morning while driving to the office after a meeting. I don\u2019t know why I listen to this show any more; the commentators on it are complete dimwits and they make me angrier than news of further banking bailouts.<\/p>\n
Anyway \u2026 The commentators were proclaiming the death of the PC in favour of the tablet. Hmm, if the likes of these commentators, the Irish Independent, and various other hype fiends were to be believed then it must be so. But the facts would contradict this.<\/p>\n
Global PC sales every year are in excess of 300 million. In fact, the Guardian reported<\/a> that Gartner expected a slow down<\/em> in growth from 10.5% to 9.3% with just<\/em> 385 million PCs being sold in 2011. The Guardian says IDC tends to be more conservative with predictions, estimating the figure will be 361.6 million PCs sold in 2011. Oh poor old Microsoft; how will they survive!?!?! <\/p>\n On the tablet front, we all know that Apple rules the roost. Marketwatch reported<\/a> that Gartner estimates 19.5 million tablets would be sold in 2011. For Apple, that\u2019s absolutely monstrous. But it\u2019s still only 5% of the market, using Gartner figures.<\/p>\n Have PC sales slumped? Dell issued a warning. HP is selling\/spinning off their PC division but that\u2019s because they make little margin, not because of it being a loser (they are number one overall in this space). Yes, PC sales are down. But there is always talk of a slump before a Windows release. <\/p>\n We\u2019re facing a Windows 8 release in 2012. People and businesses are not going to buy new Windows 7 PCs now \u2013 many of them license using OEM rather than VL or off the shelf. This expected slump is why you heard \u201cthe best path to Windows 7 is Windows Vista\u201d from Microsoft a few years ago, and why you\u2019re hearing \u201cthe best path to Windows 8 is Windows 7\u201d from them now.<\/p>\n The PC is not dead. Will the shape change? Yes, to some extent. But lets get real. Think about ergonomics; who wants to use a foot-wide tablet on their desk, 8 hours a day, 220 days a year? The big screen, keyboard, and mouse have lasted so long because they work. The tablet plays an additional role and it is very good at it (I do use an iPad), but you wouldn\u2019t see me wanting to use it in the office all day long. <\/p>\n The PC is dead! Long live the PC!<\/p>\n I was listening to the Guardian Tech Weekly podcast this morning while driving to the office after a meeting. I don\u2019t know why I listen to this show any more; the commentators on it are complete dimwits and they make me angrier than news of further banking bailouts. Anyway \u2026 The commentators were proclaiming the … Continue reading “The Reports Of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated \u2013The PC”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[180],"class_list":["post-11523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-desktop","tag-hardware"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}