The PC is not dying. They've been saying this for years. Thin clients, tablet
PCs, netbooks, have been all the rage at one time or another. It's like cloud
computing. It is a fad at best. While it does work for some people the
majority it'll never work for.
While some services easily lend themselves to to the web (mapping for
instance) others don't. Many applications need raw power, significant
bandwidth, etc. They run best on the client side where these things exist.
While there is a significant percentage of the population whom it is possible
to move to a more web-centric setup (maybe 90% of the less technical
GNU/Linux users) the rest still need raw power that the CPU/hard disk/etc
provides.
Have you ever tried to move a significant number of pictures to the web for
instance? It takes a long time. A simple task like that is part of the
problem in moving to such a setup. Unless they start rolling out 1000mbps
symmetric Internet connections to peoples homes I just don't see it
happening.
Not to mention there are other reasons the PCs not going to die. Even
desktops aren't going to die out. The wealthy populations are getting older
too for instance and that is going to impact sales of tablet style
devices/phones.
What has happened is the market has matured. At some point you hit saturation
though and there are no more people left to sell to. The people in the third
world aren't able to afford computers. What they are buying are cell phones.
Americans, Europeans, Canadians, Australians, etc are all going to continue
to purchase computers just as they have. Cell phones, tablets, etc work in
conjunction with desktops and laptop computers. Unlike with laptops your not
going to see tablets/netbooks overtake laptops/desktops any time soon.
75% of the population is over the age of 20 in the US (and I think more for
Europe). While I'm unsure how many are over the age of 30 peoples abilities
begin to decline around this age and this makes up a significant portion of
the population. As the “baby boomers” retire your going to see more
people with desktops and laptops. Not less. This population set already has a
hard enough time with desktop computers let along laptops. And now your
suggesting the PC is dead because of a fad?
At best 25% of the computers sold this year were tablets. That is probably
the highest it'll ever be.
