IBM Declares the End of the PC Era

[MKR]

The "PC is dead" thing is like the "[some kind of clothing] is back" stories you see every other year. It's filler used by boring hacks and people with a deadline and nothing to say. PR departments are happy to help both groups.

Looks at this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&q="pc is dead"

More search tools->Timeline

1988

PC might as well mean Prolonged Collapse.

 

[strollin]

You guys are reading the "PC Is Dead" stuff too literally. The fact is that the PC is becoming irrelevant as a money making product, not that it will actually disappear anytime soon. Look how much money Apple is making from the iPad/iPhone. PC mfrs are looking at declining profits while Apple is raking it in.

Don't forget that us techies are really just a small part of the overall market so while we say we'll always want/need a PC, everybody else could care less as long as they can access their FB page, email and such.

 

[legacy7955]

Considering the fact that most people are economically stressed. These non upgradable items like tablets and pads are a hideously poor value, instead you always need to buy them new. A memory or HDD or SSD upgrade on an PC is fairly easy and CHEAP!

Folks may "want" the cool factor of these toys but in the end can they afford them?

All is see over and over and over again is the marketing machine "telling" the consumer what "they want". Not the other way around.

If you look at the comments around the web that have these so called news articles telling consumers they want the tablet as their next PC. The no to yes factor is at least 9 to1. And these are the generalist news sites not Tom's, or ZD Net.

Just like the All in One PC has really failed even though the marketing push was relentless several years ago. The public did not buy them and still don't. With the All In Ones you always pay more to get LESS and they are much more difficult to upgrade.

 

[MKR]

What we need is a modern analog to the IBM PC. I don't think we'll always be stuck with tablets and smartphones you can't modify. Once the components get small enough, the guts needed to make it modifiable (like slides and standard connectors) will be possible.

 

[Barman58]

A balanced reply

What PC doomsayers miss, perhaps Dean among them, is the synergy between tablets and PCs. Many people have stopped carrying laptops as their mobile devices, but they still work on PCs in the home and office. PCs are simply more user-friendly for creating content and performing complex tasks. The iPhone and iPad are actually responsible for driving increase sales of Apple’s Mac because of the synergy. It’s not likely this marriage will end any time soon.

And, consider this: Prognosticators are already peeking over the horizon for hints of what will replace the tablet. They haven’t seen it yet, but they know that the tablet isn’t the ultimate computing device. Chances are the PC will survive through the tablet era and may actually fair better in the long-term than the venerable typewriter.

Source

 

[Dave76]

Nice article Nigel.

But, your link is this threads reply button :huh:

 

[Barman58]

Oops not sure what happened - should be fixed now

 

[mr pc]

Let's see

Major computing brands saying PC is dead and a major push for the cloud, do I see a correlation?

 

[Stratos]

You guys are reading the "PC Is Dead" stuff too literally. The fact is that the PC is becoming irrelevant as a money making product, not that it will actually disappear anytime soon. Look how much money Apple is making from the iPad/iPhone. PC mfrs are looking at declining profits while Apple is raking it in.

Don't forget that us techies are really just a small part of the overall market so while we say we'll always want/need a PC, everybody else could care less as long as they can access their FB page, email and such.

Part of that is true. I agree about how PC sales (this includes Macs) have slumped over the years, it's become harder for OEM's to rely on computer sales alone to keep themselves afloat.

The iPhone/iPad's success proves that the majority of people have no real need for a standalone computer most of the time and a portable solution like a smartphone/tablet device is more than sufficient for their needs. As you've stated, not everyone's a "techie" and we are a minority to share with the same community as "enthusiasts" and "diehard gamers". Even the "Starbucks" posers mostly check Facebook, email, go shopping online and chat.

 

[Catswold]

Try running AutoCAD 2012 on an iPad. You can't. Try running PhotoShop on an iPad. You can't. All an iPad is good for is playing games, checking email and getting immersed in social networks.

The PC dead? Hardly. Not for a long time to come. Maybe once we all get 100Mbps internet, perhaps. Still, what happens if your connection goes down?

Cloud computing is an esoteric endeavor but it will be a while before it becomes even remotely ubiquitous as PCs.

These marketing people are really one-dimensional (dimentia?) in their thinking. Just because the tablet form-factor exists and addresses a particular market they all-of-a-sudden think that the other market is now dead.

That's a little like saying "watch out, Airbus came out with the A380, now all GA aircraft (Cessna, Beech, Mooney, etc.) are now in mortal danger!" Nonsense.

Tablets are very cool devices. My iPhone4 is a cool device. I love using them. Replace my desktop and laptop machines for software development and high-volume input? Gimme a break. That simply ain't going to happen.

One other thing. Anybody else notice this constant back-and-forth thing between centralized and localized computing? I've seen it cycle back-and-forth at least a couple of times in my 35-year career as a developer. Now they're calling the central computing model the "cloud". Before that it was called the "web". Before that it was called "time sharing". Nothing new here!

-Max

You left out the terminal/mainframe systems they first had when I went to work with each desk having a dumb terminal connected to the mainframe.

They abandoned that for PC's at every workstation all of which were connected to servers.

From that we went to "dumb clients" connected to servers, then it became the LAN with PC's

As you said there's a pattern here.

When I saw this topic, my first thought was, "Not this again!"

I think that there will be a mix of light-weight users who can manage with just a pad--those whose main concern is surfing, social networking, and streaming games and videos anywhere--moderate users; those who require some computing power beyond that available in a pad and who are satisfied by lower end machines and laptops that can run Word, a little Excel maybe, and a few games--and power users who will always require a more powerful platform, the dedicated gamers, the market players, the researchers, the techies, etc.

The light weight users will always be the majority of users, but there will always be a market for PC's.

For me, I will always require a separate keyboard and the ability to run a couple of large monitors and be capable of multitasking. Example, I have my entire music collection--vinyl (at 24/96) and disc ripped to hard disk in flac--800 GB--to which I am now listening (Chicago II) as I surf the net, comment and write blogs in Word.

A Steve Jobs sanitary napkin just won't cut it.

 

[Al Fairclough]

And this from past visionaries at Big Blue -

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

 

[legacy7955]

Let's see

Major computing brands saying PC is dead and a major push for the cloud, do I see a correlation?

And what do we have but Mr. Genius HP CEO Leo Apotheker publically saying HP is out of the PC business!!!!????

I mean the PC business STILL made HP a decent if not excellent profit and this clown basically tanks their PC business !!! WTF!!!!!!

You think he would have had enough smarts to keep the decision quiet until HP could have found a buyer for the PSG, then announce it's exit from the business.

Could it be ...THESE PEOPLE ARE PURPOSELY TANKING THE PC BUSINESS?

It sure seems like it ....

Like I mentioned before it is like the industry is TELLING the consumer what they want, not the other way around. I SMELL A RAT!

 

[C32C3]

I agree, legacy7955, the industry is TELLING the consumer what they want, not the other way round. It reminds me of something that I heard somewhere that when like this: if you tell a lie long enough, people will begin to believe it. However, the truth is the pc is dead when the consumer no longer wants to buy it. And, as long as the consumer demand for pc's remain high the market will supply them. The pc is NOT dead. It's alive and well and thriving

 

[arkhi]

IBM said the same thing more than 10 years ago. LOL

Chief executive Lou Gerstner labeled e-business an important component of IBM's future while repeating a mantra often heard among CEOs: "The PC era is over." But some observers think this is sour grapes. In the company's recently posted annual report for 1998, Gerstner had a new, very strong reason to exclaim the demise of the PC. Last year Big Blue's personal systems division, which makes desktops and servers, suffered a $992 million loss largely due to price competition.​

Read more: IBM: The PC is dead - CNET News​

On that same page has great quotes such as​

Although such CEOs as Hewlett-Packard's Lew Platt have also been stating this sentiment,[...]

^Familiar?​

But some observers think this statement is too self serving. "How much of this is sour grapes because IBM can't make money moving [PC] boxes unlike Dell that does make a decent margin in the business?" wondered Danny Lam, a principal with Fisher-Holstein, a consulting firm.

​

^I agree with this guy. Almost 13 years has passed since IBM's first (or is it?) sour-grape-based declarations and they're still at it.​

​

 

[whs]

I think there will be room for both - PCs and Tablets. It will largely depend on the applications.

The "appliance users" that only want mail, social networks and some movies may tend towards tablets - and that is probably the majority of the users.

But the geek types will continue on PCs because they provide a lot more flexibility - in technical terms.

 

[C32C3]

I can agree with that. There is definitely a use for pc's, tablets and laptops. It will be interesting to see how the software developers, particularly Microsoft and Apple develop their OS's. I expect Windows 8 will lean heavily to the laptops and tablets.

 

[SergioRj]

Dumb announcement. Always IBM....

 

[whs]

Dumb announcement. Always IBM....

I don't even know how relevant this IBM guy is. "Chief Technology Officer for the Middle East and Africa region" sounds like an obscure position to me. But I have been retired for too long from IBM to really know.