Like the mainframe, which was said to be dead decades ago but has remained a meaningful business, the PC will almost certainly cheat death. True, mobile devices like the iPad will continue to gore PC sales. Those mobile devices, though, will most likely never satisfy spreadsheet masters, film editors and other workers who depend on multiple screens and the precision of a keyboard and mouse.
Still, there is a strong view among many longtime tech industry executives that the PC’s relevance will steadily diminish.
“In my humble opinion, the PC as we have known it is in a continuous decline and being relegated to a utility device for businesses,” said Hector Ruiz, the former chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices, a company that makes chips for PCs and other devices.
The mood around the PC industry has become increasingly glum. The business is effectively in a recession, and there is no upturn in sight. During the second quarter of the year, global PC shipments fell around 11 percent, for their fifth consecutive quarter of declines, the worst downturn since the advent of the PC more than 30 years ago.
Intel, supplier of the chips in most PCs, and Microsoft, which makes the Windows operating system on the vast majority of those machines, have delivered disappointing financial results. A major overhaul of Microsoft’s software, Windows 8, did not lift sales and may have made them worse.
The once-mighty Dell, deeply weakened by the PC slump, is mired in a struggle with shareholders over a plan to go private, seeking relief from investor pressure. In their bid to take the company private, Michael S. Dell, the company’s founder, and the investment firm Silver Lake have argued that they would turn the company into a corporate software services provider. A vote on the company’s future is expected this week.
While sales of PCs to businesses remain steady, demand among consumers has plunged, largely because people are instead spending money on iPads, Kindle Fires and other tablets.
Still, a reality check: more than 300 million PCs are expected to be shipped this year globally. That is a lot of widgets for a business that has caught a cold.
Tablet sales are growing explosively. This year, there are expected to be more than 200 million shipments of the devices, which will for the first time exceed shipments of notebooks, the largest category of PCs, estimates Gartner, the research firm.
Steven P. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who died in 2011, predicted several years ago that PCs would become something like trucks, workhorses used by many people but outnumbered by tablets, the cars of the technology business. (The analogy is somewhat undercut by stats: the most popular vehicle in the United States for several years has been a truck, the Ford F-150.)
One theory is that tablets are leading PC shoppers to postpone their purchases of new computers, perhaps by a year or two, but that eventually people will be ready for a fresh machine. “Replacement cycles are being pushed out,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research.
A more pessimistic view is that a lot of the consumer demand for PCs will never return. Daniel Huttenlocher, the dean and vice provost of Cornell University’s new New York City technology campus, said consumers began buying PCs in big numbers beginning in the 1990s largely because no better device existed for getting on the Internet.
But the PC, he said, was always better suited as an office machine for the production of documents, presentations and other work. In his view, tablets are better for the consumption of content, whether that is watching Netflix or surfing the Web.
“There are way more consumers than producers, period, even in a world with lots of user-generated content,” Dr. Huttenlocher said.
In the first quarter, 53 percent of computer shipments were to the consumer market while 47 percent were to the commercial market, estimates the research firm IDC.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/technology/pc-industry-fights-to-adapt-as-tablets-muscle-in.html?partner=rss&emc=rss