On the schoolyard of personal computing, the smartphone and the tablet are ganging up on the PC, giving it swirlies and stealing its lunch money. New figures are out from research firms Gartner and IDC that point to flat sales for PCs for the sixth quarter in a row even as tablet and smartphone sales continue to soar. To return to the playground analogy: PC was hoping that the new kid, Ulatrabook, would come to its rescue but Ultrabook was too pasty and disoriented to really make much of a difference. Companies have been rushing to put out thin, light PCs in the mold of Apple’s MacBook Air but they haven’t really caught on. Maybe people are waiting for Windows 8, maybe they would just rather have an iPad.
From Computerworld:
Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with ZK Research, said he expects tablets and smartphones to continue to punish the PC industry. “This is a generational change,” he said. “This isn’t a temporary phenomenon. PCs are great for information creation, where tablets and smartphones are better for information consumption and we’re mainly consumers, not creators.”
And that, according to Kerravala, should be making PC makers quake in their boots.
And it seems like a guy WITH THE NAME ZEUS would know what he’s talking about.
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