[Snickering steamroller courtesy Gizmodo]
A research firm called Global Industry Analysts this week projected the worldwide mobile computing market to hit over $328 billion by 2015. This is not particularly surprising given the sophistication of mobile technology, fast wireless networks, attractive prices, new and exciting form factors and the ever-dwindling age of gadget consumers.
This got me thinking about a time of death for desktop PCs.
Shipments of laptop computers finally overtook desktops in the third quarter of 2008 after years of faster growth. According to IDC, U.S. desktop shipments will drop to 25 million in 2013, from 31 million in 2008. Portable shipments will nearly double in that time frame to 62 million. Worldwide the situation is more stark, with desktop units dropping from 145 million to 132 million while portables surge from 143 million to 313 million.
The reality is that there is nothing driving the desktop market; no innovation, no new customer base, no new geographies to tap.
The last bastion of U.S. desktop sales, business users, isn’t big enough to sustain the market. Further, the criteria most important to buyers isn’t even exclusive to desktops. In its annual “Magic Quadrant” ranking major PC players, Gartner pointed out the features that are most important to corporate desktop PC buyers: consistency of hardware configuration, life cycle services, security, systems management and global support.
Are these checklist items not offered by laptop vendors?
Of course, none of the three remaining desktop PC players (HP, Dell, Lenovo) will bow out anytime soon. Doing so would only line the pockets of the competition, although that lining is by now almost impossibly thin.
I think IDC’s desktop projections are optimistic. By 2013 smartbooks, netbooks and regular old laptops will have evolved even further, delivering more power in more interesting shapes and sizes, with more solid security features, better mobile applications and secure access to corporate networks.
It’s hard to imagine that Dell, Lenovo and HP will collectively manage to sell 25 million boring-as-hell desktops into that environment.
Lisa
