With the news that mobile smart phones have outsold the PC for the very first time this year, I have been prompted to finally write a piece showing my observation on the shift to hand-held and mobile devices over the past decade.
In the new millennium we saw the start of an incredible boom in home PC ownership and an increase in home Internet connections offering access to the vast and infinite world wide web. Through PCs over the years we’ve seen the rise in search engines, on-line encyclopaedias, shopping services, banking, blogging and so one and so forth, but the device that was once the fixture in our bedrooms or living rooms is now seemingly being eclipsed - is this so? What are the reasons and why? May some of these figures and observations be in fact misguided or incorrect?
Firstly, I’d say we need to explore the reasons as to why the mobile phone has become so important and what is driving their sheer success in the technology industry and within people’s daily lives. If you think about it, its simply remarkable that we can use a small device to communicate with others on the go, wherever we are. Was there really a time when we only planned our weekend meet ups to the exact day and minute, at school or at work when we were all together? Was there really time when diaries were essential to storing friends’, family and colleagues’ contact details? Did we really make so many voice calls, through a strictly wired implementation? What did we once do if a person was late or delayed to an event or gathering or if they had to cancel? Its hard to really imagine the way things were before mobile phones, but this is because they have vastly changed our lives and added a new level of convenience and flexibility we never had before. This flexibility alone is the principal reason why the mobile phone exists and went on to drive the first few billion devices, simply with the ability to call and later ‘text’, but its what happened next that really changed the game…
Mobile phones became ‘smart’ which is to say they did a lot more than just the basics we came to expect. Implementing simple computing functionality, they actually started organising our lives to a greater extent, with calenders and planners. Basic internet access through WAP (wireless application protocol) allowed us to access snippets of information once upon a time only big, devices connected to a phone line could only provide. This technology grew. Soon we had music players, cameras, larger internal storage of several gigabytes and expandable memory, colour screens, added and improved Java support, introduced more flexible internet browsers and we saw a huge improvement in network infrastructure, offering greater coverage . What happened to the mobile telephone? It became a computer.
Looking at the modern day, we have smart-phones that have HD displays, processors that break the 1GHz barrier and double up with dual cores, 512MB-1GB RAM, incredibly sophisticated operating systems. The smart-phone has grown into a full-on, formidable computing and multimedia platform. But what has encouraged the smart-phone specifically overtake the PC as not just ‘some product’ but as a personal computing device? I would say there are a few main factors, including; portability, fashion, accessible pricing - but more than that is the fact that they’re always on and always connected. This is the major difference between the PC and the smart-phone. Humans have developed an incredible appetite not only information but the ability to access it, 24/7. Smart-phones provide this with immediate internet access, the ability to access social networks, blogs and news anywhere. The ability to be fed information directly onto their device and communicate through various channels beyond text messaging – much like the PC - but being on the go makes it truly special. Of course, the smart-phone isn’t just about the internet, but the convergence of multiple consumer electronics devices - the music player, the gaming device, the camera and so on, which has added another dimension all together.
So is the PC ‘dying’? Is it finished as a platform and an idea? Well, not necessarily. Firstly we should look into the changes the PC has seen itself. It may surprise many people that a year or two ago, market statistics indicated that 70% of all computers sold were Laptops. Considering this, the PC in its traditional form has long been on its way out, or more accurately becoming a smaller factor for the average consumer. For years, proceeding the smart-phone boom, we’ve experienced the consumer’s appetite for a more portable experiences to suit our increasingly mobile lives and the reduced living spaces some are becoming accustomed to. Mobile smart-phones, are merely an expansion of this to a great extent, as are the increasingly popular tablet devices (which this article is being typed on) that provide somewhat of an ‘intermediate layer’ between the Laptop and the Smart-phone, offering more practicality in mobile computing, yet all the connectivity and portability of the phone.
Now, it would be crazy to forget why the PC, Laptops included are in fact still around. PCs categorically offer superior computing power and a level of evolution and flexibility that other devices don’t. Desktops offer full user upgrade facilities and unlimited ways to expand the platform. Development of advanced applications and systems would be almost impossible without the traditional computer, where software really is the key to our relationship with electronics devices in the modern day, beyond simply hardware. The very ecosystems that were grown for out mobile devices were developed on PC. The power and flexibility of the PC has many implications for video games, with potential far beyond that of smart-phones, tablets and consoles, especially when we factor in user generated content which itself reaches outside the games industry. Not to forget, PCs still remain the most practical way to write letters, documents and effectively run and contribute to business on a daily basis.
Looking at these basic facts, we see that the PC certainly isn’t dead and as a matter of fact is a necessary part of computing in our lives - however, we simply can’t ignore the shift taking place. Sales aren’t everything, but they’re backed up by certain facts, for example; smart-phones are now the leading platform for internet access and e-mail across the world, this is even more prominent in developing countries. Smart-phone ownership literally doubled last year and the total mobile phone subscriptions in the world has reach nearly 6 Billion, in a near world population matching statistic.
My view is that the smart-phone taking over our lives isn’t the death or destruction of the PC by any means, but quite remarkably, its what “The PC” has become. Much like the Laptops (which now dominate the desktop themselves) and the games consoles (with millions of installations and record game software sales and revenues) that came before our beloved smart-phone, we’re just seeing yet another transformation and form factor of the very PC that started it all off. Sure we’ll see many peaks, troughs and changes over the years - the eventual death (or at most optimistic prediction, ‘near death’) of the net-book yet the rise of the ultra-book and tablet and, the more specific, maybe even niche usages of the traditional desktop PC yet the rise of the smart-phone as the principle internet enabled device - and the continual presence of dedicated consoles, set tops and rise in smart TVs - but these devices will coexist in an environment where computing is everywhere and in multiple forms.
~AC
