The Death Of The PC: What Happens Next?

In what could signal the collapse of the current PC market dominance, the latest report on shipments has shown that they have dropped by -13.9% for the first quarter in 2013, against same time last year.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) released their findings this month, and the result shows some startling figures.

Of the top 5 vendors worldwide, only the Chinese-owned Lenovo (formerly IBM) showed no percentage decrease year on year – although they also showed no increase. As one of the fastest growing technology brands in the marketplace (No. 1 for technology in Asia, No. 2 in Europe, although not well known in Australia), the fact that Lenovo has stalled in their growth shows more than anything that the PC market has plateaued.

The IDC analysts are pinning the blame for the drop on the decimation of Netbook sales, as well as the shift in consumer and corporate spending on phones and tablets rather than PCs. The boost expected from Windows 8 not only didn’t materialise, but it seems has had the opposite effect. Consumers have stayed away in droves from the new operating system, put off by the fact that it is a very expensive way of turning a PC into a tablet, when you can buy a cheaper tablet instead.

Apple was not immune from the drop in PC sales, with their shipments declining worldwide. Apple however partly makes up for their loss in desktop and laptop sales with increasing sales of the iPad.

Not so for Microsoft, who has seen lackluster sales of its hardware in addition to its latest Windows operating system. The reaction to Microsoft’s role in the PC market has been a downgrade of its shares from Neutral to Sell by Goldman Sachs, the global investment banking and securities business.

So what happens next?

David Glance, the Director of the Centre for Software Practice at the University of Western Australia has opined that the disappearance of the PC will first be noted in the home, with the classic desktop being replaced with tablets, phones, and other smart devices (such as the Smart TV), followed by the workplace, as docking stations, external keyboards, and cloud computing allow workers to interface their mobile units directly with the office.

Some small businesses have already embraced this change, with businesses as diverse as performance groups to real estate agents dropping their PC workplace in favour of working directly from iPads and an Apple base-station to stay on the move.

With Woolworths announcing this week that they are moving from PCs and Microsoft-based business products to Google’s offerings – dumping the likes of Outlook, Office, and PCs for Gmail, Google Docs, and Chromebooks, we are seeing the shift in momentum with the big corporations as well.

What it means for us

The major factor to take form this is the ever-increasing uptake of mobile is now being reflected in sales. While the digital push is still leading the way, the use of mobile apparatus is sky-rocketing, and with the introduction of low-cost tablets to the marketplace (and the subsequent reduction of PCs) mobile is now the leading media touchpoint for many audiences. The other important factor is making sure that our websites are optimised for a mobile audience. With the increases discussed, more people searching and surfing on their mobiles means more people visiting sites from those devices. If the website visited is not optimised for mobile, people may be likely to move to another site that is.