[IMG]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/03/06/technology/06ipad-span/06ipad-span-articleLarge.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE]The chief executive of Apple, Timothy D. Cook, has a prediction: the day will come when tablet devices like the Apple iPad outsell traditional personal computers.
His forecast has backing from a growing number of analysts and veteran technology industry executives, who contend that the torrid growth rates of the iPad, combined with tablet competition from the likes of Amazon.com and Microsoft, make a changing of the guard a question of when, not if.
Tablet sales are likely to get another jolt this week when Apple introduces its newest version of the iPad, which is expected to have a higher resolution screen. With past iterations of the iPad and iPhone, Apple has made an art of refining the devices with better screens, faster processors and speedier network connections, as well as other bells and whistles — steadily broadening their audiences.
An Apple spokeswoman, Trudy Muller, declined to comment on an event the company is holding Wednesday in San Francisco that is expected to feature the new product.
Any surpassing of personal computers by tablets will be a case of the computer industry’s tail wagging the dog. The iPad, which seemed like a nice side business for Apple when it was introduced in 2010, has become a franchise for the company, accounting for $9.15 billion in revenue in the holiday quarter, or about 20 percent of Apple’s total revenue. The roughly 15 million iPads Apple sold in that period was more than twice the number it sold a year earlier.
In the fall, Amazon introduced the iPad’s first credible competitor in the $199 Kindle Fire. Although Amazon does not release sales figures for the device, some analysts estimate it sold about four million in the holiday quarter. Later this year, tablets from a variety of hardware manufacturers based on a new, touchscreen-friendly operating system from Microsoft, Windows 8, could further propel the market.
“Tablets are on fire, there’s no question about that,” said Brad Silverberg, a venture capitalist in Seattle at Ignition Partners and a former Microsoft executive, who hastened to add that he was speaking mainly of the iPad, which dominates current sales.
Tablets are not there yet. In 2011, PCs outsold tablets almost six-to-one, estimates Canalys, a technology research company. But that is still a significant change from 2010, the iPad’s first year on the market, when PCs outsold tablets 20-to-one, according to Canalys. For the last two years, PC sales were flat, while iPad sales were booming. The Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook gave the market an additional lift over the holidays. Apple is banking on the tablet market. Its iPad brought in nearly 40 percent more revenue during the holidays than Apple’s own computer business, the Macintosh, did.
“From the first day it shipped, we thought — not just me, many of us thought at Apple — that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market, and it was just a matter of the time that it took for that to occur,” Mr. Cook of Apple said recently at a Goldman Sachs investor conference.
Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, estimated that Mr. Cook’s prediction would come true in 2017, but others contend tablets will be on top sooner than that.
For example, in a blog post on Friday, Horace Dediu, an analyst with Asymco in Finland, made a detailed argument that tablet sales would pass traditional PC sales in the fall of 2013. His projections rest heavily on an assumption that Apple will face more serious competition in the tablet market from Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Windows 8 and a wave of other devices based on Google’s Android, an operating system that has been mostly successful in the smartphone market.
Tim Bucher, an entrepreneur who has held senior positions at Apple, Microsoft and Dell, said tablet sales would “absolutely” pass those of PCs, a trend he argued will become even more pronounced as a younger, tablet-savvy generation ages.
“I think the older generation does not pick up on the way of interacting with the new devices,” Mr. Bucher said, contrasting older people with the next generation. “I don’t know how many YouTube videos there are out there showing everyone from babies to animals interacting with iPads.”
Where does that change leave the PC, the lowly machine that defined computing for decades?
At a technology conference in 2010, Steven P. Jobs, then Apple’s chief executive, heralded what he called the post-PC era and compared personal computers to the trucks that prevailed in the automobile industry until society began moving away from its agrarian roots. PCs are “still going to be around and have a lot of value,” said Mr. Jobs, who died in October. “But they’re going to be used by one out of X people.”
Even Mr. Cook in his recent speech said he was not predicting the demise of the PC industry, although he did say the iPad was cannibalizing some computer sales, more Windows PCs than the much smaller market for Macs. One category of PCs where that is especially true is netbooks, the inexpensive notebook computers that have had a steep decline in shipments in the last couple of years. “What the iPad is doing is taking growth away from the PC market that would have gone to a secondary or tertiary device,” said Mr. Dediu. “It’s not so much people are going to drop PCs. They’re going to add this additional device.”
Traditional PCs are not standing still. Boxy desktop computers are an ever-diminishing part of the PC business, while Apple’s MacBook Air and a category of Windows laptops with Intel processors called ultrabooks have reinvented traditional clamshell notebooks as super-thin devices that turn on instantly like tablets.
Microsoft’s introduction of Windows 8 promises to shake up computer designs further. Microsoft and its hardware partners have shown laptops with keyboards that can be swiveled around or removed altogether, turning them into tablets.
“The tablet and PC markets are all going to blur,” said Tim Coulling, an analyst at Canalys. “We’re going to see a lot of form-factor innovation. We’ll be asking what is a tablet and what is a traditional PC?”[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/technology/as-new-ipad-debut-nears-some-see-decline-of-pcs.html[/url]
[editline]5th March 2012[/editline]
The picture looks so dumb
He is one of the most optimistic people I have heard of.
[QUOTE=Sobotnik;35006093]He is one of the most optimistic people I have heard of.[/QUOTE]
One of the dumbest too.
I can't think up of a good way to call this utterly stupid.
I guess when touchscreen Windows 8 laptops and hybrids come out, people will stop chanting the death of the PC.
Can an iPAD play the full Crysis?
No?
That's what I thought.
[QUOTE=Burgervich;35006159]Can an iPAD play the full Crysis?
That's what I thought.[/QUOTE]
dude who cares about crysis it has angry birds!!!
[QUOTE=Burgervich;35006159]Can an iPAD play the full Crysis?
That's what I thought.[/QUOTE]
Or Portal, Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, Counter-Strike and all the other games that the Ipad will never be able to play.
and then something new and shinier comes out and that's what is going to be predicted to kill PCs
The ipad can be an alternative to a pc when you don't need it for anything other than email, surfing the web, and that sort of thing.
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;35006177]dude who cares about crysis it has angry birds!!![/QUOTE]
When I played Angry Birds on someones phone, it just felt like one of those random flash games with the catapult you see on Newgrounds or something. It's just got birds with frowny faces and that's it. I personally didn't like the game.
[QUOTE=sami-pso;35006213]The ipad can be an alternative to a pc when you don't need it for anything other than email, surfing the web, and that sort of thing.[/QUOTE]
so could a net book for an 8th of the cost
[QUOTE=Venezuelan;35006177]dude who cares about crysis it has angry birds!!![/QUOTE]
Crush the Castle eats Angry Birds for breakfast.
I just wish the iPad actually offered something more than being a large iPod touch
sure it's nice to watch a film on, but then again so is a television or laptop, to justify the iPad for me it actually needs to do something..
PCs will never die out, you can't do everything with a fucking tablet piece of shit.
Ain't that the same thing they said with the iPad 1?
[QUOTE=smidge146;35006278]PCs will never die out, you can't do everything with a fucking tablet piece of shit.[/QUOTE]
My tablet is only good for the odd bits of web browsing, its far too uncomfortable for real work without a keyboard, this is where the ASUS Transformer wins.
I have absolutely no fucking clue who said this but someone said in like 10 years PCs won't be dead, but they won't be owned by everyone and be as widespread as they are today
That's pretty much what I see happening, a lot of the basic shit people need PCs for can be done on phones now
Unless a tablet can program for itself and do everything itself without the need of a computer, why would PC's see a decline? Also perhaps the truth lies in the fact that a brand new PC can last you several years without the need of an upgrade (Despite part upgrades being available) and still do everything you want it to, so perhaps there is no need to keep buying PC's all the time?
But don't get me wrong I really like the look of the iPad, I just wish people wouldn't say PC's are going to go away because they aren't. Give me a nice tactile keyboard and mouse any day and I'm sure many many people feel like this too.
[QUOTE=The Baconator;35006053][IMG]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/03/06/technology/06ipad-span/06ipad-span-articleLarge.jpg[/IMG]
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/technology/as-new-ipad-debut-nears-some-see-decline-of-pcs.html[/url]
[editline]5th March 2012[/editline]
The picture looks so dumb[/QUOTE]
Asians are even bigger trendies and apple sheeple than americans
they would rather die than go without having the latest and greatist iphone/ipad only because its popular
I'm confused as to how adding faster processors and better screens is 'broadening their audience'. I don't believe the two are related.
I can understand why they might outsell PC's, but the thing is, I only know one person who actively uses it. When it comes to any sort of word processing, taxes, homework, anything, everyone I know goes right to their laptop. Tablets really are an electronic niche that I can see dieing out. I have a Dell Streak and iPad, I never use the iPad and the Dell Streak.. Is my alarm clock. Probably the most expensive one I've ever bought.
Do I see netbooks and desktops becoming much more of a niche? Absolutely. Our electronics are getting smaller and smaller, the laptop is going to shine. But the tablet isn't a threat, and it most certainly isn't going to unsurp the market. It really falls into the 'every once in a while' category of electronics. At least until we can start doing more with the thing, beyond reading the news and playing Angry Birds.
[QUOTE=icemaz;35006410]Unless a tablet can program for itself and do everything itself without the need of a computer, why would PC's see a decline? Also perhaps the truth lies in the fact that a brand new PC can last you several years without the need of an upgrade (Despite part upgrades being available) and still do everything you want it to, so perhaps there is no need to keep buying PC's all the time?
But don't get me wrong I really like the look of the iPad, I just wish people wouldn't say PC's are going to go away because they aren't. Give me a nice tactile keyboard and mouse any day and I'm sure many many people feel like this too.[/QUOTE]
You don't have to upgrade a tablet or an iPad if it does what you want it to
[QUOTE=djjkxbox360;35006472]You don't have to upgrade a tablet or an iPad if it does what you want it to[/QUOTE]
You don't have to upgrade a PC if it does what you want it to.
I think it's more likely once they get wireless USB working your tablet/phone will be your PC. Just drop it onto a near field display port and it will work exactly like a traditional PC.
This is pretty much exactly what Microsoft seem to be promoting, unified experience across all platforms. Though there will always be a market for performance computing, it is still only a small market and most tablet processors are more than enough for everyday use.
lol tablet laptop without a keyboard
he forgot the part where i can't buy a bunch of parts and build a tablet better than an ipad for half the price
I see tablets as a bit of a gimmick. I mean sure I can think of a good few uses for one, maybe even enough to convince me to buy a cheap Android based tablet, but I don't see them replacing my PC, it's just awkward, they lack the performance for what I like to do (games, game design) and never really feel that 'comfortable' to use.
Most people I know who own it use it for facebook, picture and pdf viewing.
Luxury product.
[QUOTE=Valdor;35006203]and then something new and shinier comes out and that's what is going to be predicted to kill PCs[/QUOTE]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgls9IwWUyU[/media]
???
They wont 'kill' PCs, they will simply outsell them. There will always be demand for a beefy home computer until they can take all of the best bits of a home PC and somehow put it into a smaller portable device, and even then a lot of people will still probably prefer what they are used to.
The iPad is just too gimmicky for me, I have tried it and it was basically the same as my iPhone 4 but with a bigger screen + some of the good bits taken out and replaced with gimmicks. I could see myself getting a cheap tablet to watch movies while I travel or whatever but I'd never pay as much as the iPad currently costs.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
