After years of false starts, the tablet market sprang to life with the launch of Apple’s iPad in April 2010. Only 18 months later, tablet penetration among U.S. households had already hit 11 percent, according to a Google/Ipsos study. No other technology in this comparison has had such a fast start. Since that date, Amazon’s (essentially U.S.-only) Kindle Fire was introduced and sold at least five million units. In the last two quarters, Apple has also sold approximately 10 million more iPads in the U.S. market. As a result, the number of consumers in the U.S. who own a tablet computer now exceeds 13 percent just two years into the market’s existence.
Annnnnd, It’s Gone…
Three years from now, tablet computers will outsell traditional Windows PCs, and do so by a whopping 72%, according to the latest projections from Gartner. In between, PC shipments drop at ever faster rates. Some of that decline will be made up by the faster growth in "ultramobiles," the new breed of Windows 8 devices such as Microsoft Surface Pro. But the PC decline is permanent, reflecting a "long-term change in user behavior," according to the Gartner statement.
Gartner Says…
Most users "will be satisfied with the experience they get from a tablet as their main computing device," according to Carolina Milanesi, a research vice president at Gartner. "As consumers shift their time away from their PC to tablets and smartphones, they will no longer see their PC as a device that they need to replace on a regular basis." The report, "Forecast: Devices by Operating System and User Type, Worldwide, 2010-2017, 1Q13 Update," is on Gartner's website.
It's Like Nothing Ever Seen in 2017
Gartner predicts that the traditional PC notebooks and desktop market will decline 7.6% in
2013. If you factor in the growth of the ultramobiles, the decline is less: 3.5%. Total PC shipments for 2013 are forecast at 315 million units, compared to 341 million in 2012. Ultramobiles will account for 23.6 million in 2013, compared to just 9.8 million in 2012.
By contrast, Gartner predicts tablets shipments will reach 197 million units in 2013, a 69.8% increase over 116 million units in 2012. And that kind of growth will be visible in all markets, including so-called emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Tablets are a far more likely mobile phone companion than a notebook PC for consumers, according to Gartner.
By the end of 2017, Gartner predicts tablet shipments of 468 million compared to 272 million PCs. In short, in 3 years... PCs will be outsold by tablets.
Mobile phones generally, which Gartner does not break down into feature phones and smartphones, will keep growing but not as fast: 1.9 billion units in 2013 to 2.1 billion by the end of 2017.
According to Gartner, there are now at least 1.4 billion PCs in use worldwide. It remains to be seen whether tablets can maintain their record-setting pace. Mobile phones, on the other hand, are already selling more than 1.4 billion units every single year. One thing seems certain: squeezed between tablets and ever-smarter phones, the PC is seeing its reign as the world’s “personal” computer draw to a close.
So Wasabi, as we stated before, we certainly empathize with the folks that are clinging on to the old form factor, the “PC”; however, as we said in our article three months ago, the PC Market’s real issue is not environmental, economic, or even logistics; it’s cultural, in a word, “iPad”. So remember, Wasabi said it first, if something doesn't change, all we can say is, "Rest in PC".
Collateral Damage
So before we sign off with "That's all Folks.." let us leave you with this thought, i.e., What are the things that we could do with PCs that we are more than willing to abandon by switching to a tablet format? Perhaps, generating original content? Yes? Working on Word, Excel, or any content generating application for that matter. Oh sure, there will be exceptions where some nerd will connect a keyboard and mouse and click away, but for the majority of the population, haven't we struck a cord? Maybe, we've finally admitted to ourselves that computing's real purpose in life is to communicate and receive information and not generate it... Some food for thought....
Collateral Damage
So before we sign off with "That's all Folks.." let us leave you with this thought, i.e., What are the things that we could do with PCs that we are more than willing to abandon by switching to a tablet format? Perhaps, generating original content? Yes? Working on Word, Excel, or any content generating application for that matter. Oh sure, there will be exceptions where some nerd will connect a keyboard and mouse and click away, but for the majority of the population, haven't we struck a cord? Maybe, we've finally admitted to ourselves that computing's real purpose in life is to communicate and receive information and not generate it... Some food for thought....
Source(s):
- http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=clientFriendlyUrl&id=2396815
- http://www.itnews.com/configuration-maintenance/58365/gartner-tablet-shipments-outstrip-pcs-72-3-years
So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”
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About Rick Ricker
An IT professional with over 21 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.
For more information, contact Rick at (800) 399-6085
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