Forget 2012 end of the world, the PC apocalypse comes in 2015
Damn, if only some analyst firm other than IDC supported my long-standing position about cloud-connected mobile devices displacing PCs. After all, I dissed IDC's crazy forecast about Windows Phone being No. 2 smartphone OS in 2015. Now the firm is back with another 2015 prediction, which I must agree with.
Spurred on by smartphone and media tablet adoption, more US Net users will access the Internet through wireless mobile devices than those wired to PCs; within four years. IDC predicts stagnation and then decline in number wired Internet users. Stated another way: Decline of the PC, since -- c`mon -- who really uses one without the Internet.
"Forget what we have taken for granted on how consumers use the Internet", Karsten Weide, IDC research vice president, says in a statement. "Soon, more users will access the Web using mobile devices than using PCs, and it's going to make the Internet a very different place".
Oh yeah? It's going to make the PC a very different place. IDC has lovely timing, dropping this atomic bomb on the eve of Microsoft's BUILD developer conference and coming out party for Windows 8. If tomorrow's keynote demos aren't all about tablets and mobile devices, there's still time to change them! Quick, somebody call Windows & Windows Live president Steven Sinofsky off the stage. It's time to change the keynote rehearsal.
Maybe I can disagree with IDC after all. How could it possibly take that long, given how many Americans already have smartphones, which require data plans. According to comScore, 82.2 Americans aged 13 or older had smartphones at the end of July -- that's 35 percent of all cell phone users. Perhaps it's really a question of replacement, when that tablet -- or, gasp, smartphone -- is good enough to displace your PC.
On Halloween 2008, I asked in a Microsoft Watch post: "Will your next PC be a smartphone?" I've been on a tear about the PC era waning before the cloud-connected mobile device era for years. Feature phones and smartphones are much more personal than are PCs. In March 2010, writing about a prediction made by a Google employee, I followed up with, here at Betanews: "Will the smartphone replace the PC in three years?" My answer was "Yes". Months later, I qualified it by adding tablets to smartphones replacing PCs, something that's already occurring, according to Gartner and IDC.
Every time I broach this topic, commenters come out in droves. So to spice it up, let's do a poll to go along with your surely heated comments.
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