New data is in: PC sales are down for the fifth straight quarter.
Observers jumping onto the "PC is dead" bandwagon is in full swing, needless to say.
There is no doubt that the desktop PC (and maybe even moreso the laptop) is wounded. Perhaps critically so, because there's a powerful self-fulfilling prophecy effect going on in an ecosystem like this. Hardware, application, and platform developers all need to fundamentally believe in a profitable future or they will stop investing.
My point is it doesn't have to be that way.
Granted - tablets and smartphones are already better for a whole bunch of situations where a user is primarily in media consumption mode. And consuming content on-the-move? Absolutely no contest.
But what about the other use case? What will give me the best possible user experience when I'm actually focused on on doing something with my device? As in, the anti- "I'm at Starbucks, sipping a latte, browsing the latest fashion on Instagram" use case?
Like playing a AAA video game. Or crunching on a 500-row Excel sheet. Or writing a book.
Crazy as it sounds, people still actually create stuff, make things, and entertain themselves without an insatiable appetite to be multitasking "on-the-go". We're OK just sitting on our ass, sometimes, and want that to be a really great experience.
Who should win the battle over that second use case?
1. Mobile/tablet/embedded computing developers who need to worry about battery life, tiny form-factors, high costs, closed ecosystems, and fidgety input schemas for these uses?
2. Or, the desktop/living room developers who have access to basically infinite processing power, high-rez big-format displays, and comfortable mouse/keyboard/controller inputs?
There should be two huge markets here solving two obviously distinct use cases. But instead we've got one going full-steam and the other gravely wounded.
Please, someone innovate and making sitting here at my desk a great experience again...
No comments:
Post a Comment