(August 19, 2011)
With the IBM PC turning 30 years old this year, there has been a lot of talk about the end of the PC platform. Sure Apple’s Steve Jobs has been saying this since the launch of the iPad, but earlier this month Mark Dean, IBM’s CTO, predicted the death of the PC. He also predicted that tablets and smartphones are taking its place. To pile on the hurt, HP announced that they want to get rid of their PC division, currently they are the largest manufacture of PCs in the world.
Why the PC isn’t really dying
Stephen Murdoch, Vice President of Dell, said that “people have been commenting on the death of the mainframe for 20 years. IBM still derives a great deal of profit from selling them”. In another forum earlier this month, Michael Dell also suggested that Windows 8 and the new Android OS will take tablets to a whole new level.
Fundamentally the PC as we know it may be changing, but it may be far from dying. The PC is simply shifting forms, much like it did in 1992 when IBM produced the first color laptop. Not to mention there are still many applications that require much more horse power than a small form factor can give, such as: 3D video rendering, gaming and computer aided graphic design.
What it all means to you
In a nutshell, it probably doesn’t mean a whole lot in the short term. Users will continue to shift some tasks towards smaller devices such as tablets and smart phones while more powerful tasks will require your PC or laptop. This trend can already been seen with sales people using smartphones to pull up data, doctors accessing patient records on a tablet and many other customer interfacing rolls. The market is changing, but not fast enough that our PCs are going to be going the way of the typewriter anytime soon.
