Like it or not, tablets, like the Apple iPad, and the range of Android based tablets available, have been on people’s shopping lists a lot more lately than PC’s have. Research firm Gartner says the worldwide PC sales have dropped by around 4.9%. It may not seem like much, but it is quite a considerable number.
Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner said:
“Tablets have dramatically changed the device landscape for PCs, not so much by ‘cannibalizing’ PC sales, but by causing PC users to shift consumption to tablets rather than replacing older PCs. This transformation was triggered by the availability of compelling low-cost tablets in 2012, and will continue until the installed base of PCs declines to accommodate tablets as the primary consumption device.”
Tablets (or most of them at least) are cheaper than PC’s, and do exactly what most people want to do on them, which includes browsing the web (Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, etc), playing a few games, and accessing a wide range of cheap (and even free) applications to do specific tasks. They are easy to pick up, and play devices. The touch screens allow for much greater freedom than current keyboard/mouse affairs on most PC/Laptop devices.
So as Mikako Kitagawa stated, most people’s PC’s are now gathering dust whilst the tablets are at the helm of their entertainment needs. Because lets face it; Most people who do use PC’s/laptops only use them for basic tasks most of the time. I for one do a lot of different tasks on a PC, including music composition, and 3D modeling, both of which a PC is better for, with a mouse/keyboard in the hands, and a lot more power demanded.
Notebooks/Netbooks (basic laptops) never caused this much of an issue, as people demanded more power than these could give out. They start-up slow, and remain mostly clunky throughout use. Tablets on the other hand are very fast devices. Starting up most of the time in only a few seconds, and with easy to use interfaces that make finding what you want a simple task.
Windows 8, the tablet based Operating System (at least in its start-up state) was hoped to put fire back into the PC/Laptop market allowing easy access to applications in the same form a tablet has, with home menu’s, etc, however Gartner says that it failed to revitalize the PC market.
Most PC’s for example incorporating Windows 8 do not have touch screens to take use of the technology, and laptops, even though they are getting lighter are still a lot heftier than picking up a tablet whilst sitting on the couch. This is especially true and when out on the move; on the train and so forth.
When it comes to PC/laptop sales however, HP is at the moment the top dog, with the most sales over the last quarter, with Lenovo second, Dell third, and Acer, forth. HP did see a drop of 0.5%, but Lenovo saw an increase of 8.2% but not enough to beat HP’s market share. Dell on the other hand dropped a massive 21%, and Acer, 11%.
I guess when it comes to people like me though, who build PC’s from scratch, these figures will not show on these reports. Maybe, just maybe, more and more people are building PC’s rather than buying them from major companies?…
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I am yet to own a tablet, however, my Samsung Galaxy S3, remains in my pocket at all times, and has in a sense, replaced the PC for immediate browsing on the web (Facebook mainly), and the occasional Youtube video. Maybe it is I though, who is behind the times, and everyone else is ahead of me now.
At least Microsoft has the right idea, in releasing a tablet that can do both tablet tasks, and normal PC tasks, and hopefully, we will be seeing a lot more of those this year.
