Not a decade ago, Laptop and Desktop sales were on a high rise with companies like Microsoft totally depending on the sales of its PC operating system Windows, but the bubble blew out in 2012 with the PC market saturation, when for the first time in the 21th century, PC shipments started to fall. Economists are expecting a continuing decline in the coming days too. But what changed in just a decade? Why are lesser people buying PCs. A major reason for that can be accounted for the increasing use of smartphones.
In 2008, Steve Jobs changed the world with the introduction of the iphone. People were introduced to a device that could do their basic day-to-day tasks without their hectic to turn-on and off their PCs. As he said,
“An ipod, a phone and an internet communicator.”
Steve Jobs
The quote used by Steve Jobs while introducing the iphone to the world, the revolutionary device. Though the device doesn’t seem a breakthrough comparing to the present day smartphones, but it was a revolutionary thing in 2008. The situation was more graved by the introduction of android by Google Inc. and the first android device HTC Dream, also known as the T-Mobile G1. Since then, android and iPhone hardware have continued to be better than ever.
In 2017, Qualcomm Snapdragon, a leading manufacturer of android processors, tried to extend their wings with their then latest flagship processor, the Snapdragon 835 by embedding it into a PC. This led to the first always-on PC of the world. Though the experiment didn’t prove to be even called a success, it was at far a great idea, and we again saw Snapdragon trying again with their Snapdragon 850, which was specially designed for PCs in 2018. But mobile processors didn’t ever take a lead in PC market due to having a totally different architecture causing most of the apps not running on them.
The PCs generally use the Intel Core processors that are built on x86 architecture while Snapdragon processors run on ARM Cortex.
This creates a huge difference between them. Smartphone processors cannot handle a heavy operating systems like Windows. That’s why the Snapdragon 835 couldn’t be successful. Also, the PC apps needed to be rewritten to work with ARM based processors.
Today, PCs are emerging as a way for professionals, while smartphones are taking their place in the stock consumer markets. PCs are radicalizing work environments in offices, Government offices, Companies, Gaming, Animations, Photo editing, Coding, that are still beyond the smartphone niche. Though smartphones have surpassed PCs in the communication sector, and in the past year smartphone browsing has outnumbered PC browsing user base, we see that PC browsers are far more feature rich than smartphone browser available so far, but those features are only used by the professionals and learners. Smartphones have more diverse apps, free apps and are more handy than any PC so far.
The Final Conclusion
PCs are changed the way they were used a decade ago, they have grown smarter, faster and notably more professional. Smartphone on the other hand is a user friendly device that is used by masses for their simple day-to-day tasks and as a communication device, setting alarms, reminders, browsing, etc. It may be in the future that some new smartphone technology overtakes PCs, but, that seems quite far.
Tech Storyz 