The Death of the PC Has Not Been Greatly Exaggerated
“Research outfit Gartner tracked a 9.5 percent decline in shipments in the second quarter of this year compared to the same time a year ago, posting a tally of 68.4 million units. Meanwhile, researchers at IDC, which doesn’t count tablets in its report, calculated an 11.8 percent drop year-over-year to 66.1 million PCs shipped. To put that number into context, Apple said in its most recent earnings report that it had sold 61 million iPhones during the same quarter—and that’s just one smartphone from one (massively popular) company.
These days, the big players—Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook—are putting their resources toward optimizing their businesses for mobile. They haven’t all cracked the code, but they’re trying. In the meantime, PCs have yet to settle into a niche, given their diminished place in tech’s new hierarchy. With mobile, the question is, what else can we do with it? With PCs, the question is, what are they still good for?”
Source: wired.com.