It’s all Steve Jobs’ fault really. You can see why he said it, of course, and the massive success of the iPad since has only served to reinforce his argument, from an Apple perspective at least. It helped that his company was not – and never has been -quite in the PC mainstream.
You could possibly trace it back even further to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Sun CEO Scott McNealy and their enthusiasm for the network computer (remember that?) back in 1996. The difference is one of timing – and success.
So anyway, back in June 2010 Jobs told the D8 conference in California that we were entering the "post-PC era". He didn’t say that PCs would cease to be important or disappear overnight. Instead he deployed an interesting analogy to describe what was happening as devices such as tablets started to take over some of the roles traditionally confined to desktops.
"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centres, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks," he said. "Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy", adding: "We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it’s uncomfortable."
Not for Apple though, because Jobs’ successor Tim Cook was at it again when the company launched its latest iPad, which he described as the ultimate poster-child of the post-PC world. "When we’re talking about the post-PC world, we’re talking about a world where the PC is no longer the centre of your digital world, but rather just the device," Cook said. "We’re talking about a world where your new device, the devices you use the most, need to be more portable, more personal, and dramatically easier to use than any PC has ever been."
It’s not just Apple either. Industry veteran Ray Ozzie, who created Lotus Notes and served as chief technical officer and chief software architect at Microsoft from 2005 to 2010, joined the fray just hours later. Speaking at a technology conference run by tech blog GeekWire, he was unequivocal: "People argue about ‘are we in a post-PC world?’. Why are we arguing? Of course we are in a post-PC world. That doesn’t mean the PC dies; that just means that the scenarios that we use them in, we stop referring to them as PCs, we refer to them as other things."
Disputed
If there’s one company guaranteed to dispute the notion of the post-PC world, you’d expect it to be Microsoft. Back in 2010, a day after Jobs had spoken, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told the same conference that the iPad was really just another type of PC. He dismissed the ‘PCs are trucks’ argument too. "Our cars will get bigger and sleeker and faster and better… but they’re still cars," he said.
Later, Ballmer argued: "I think people are going to be using PCs in greater numbers in the years to come, but I think PCs will start to look different. They’ll get smaller, lighter, sometimes they won’t have a keyboard. Sometimes the UI will look different, the underlying infrastructure will move to SOCs. The question is what’s a PC? Nothing that people do on PCs today will get less relevant, there’s no question that what people do on a PC they’ll do on other devices."
Intriguingly, the dispute seemed to have been over the semantics of what constitutes a PC. Ballmer argued that pretty much everything is a PC and a PC is pretty much everything which, incidentally, if you included iPads (as some market researchers do) would make Apple the world’s biggest PC manufacturer. Anyway, in Microsoft’s case, the idea of defining all these devices as PCs, whatever the form factor, is pretty much tied up with its plans for Windows 8 as a ubiquitous OS that will play across desktops, laptops and tablets. Understandably, Microsoft isn’t keen on the post-PC tag; last August corporate communications vice president Frank Shaw came up with a different one: the ‘PC-plus era’.
So which era are we in? In the same month as Shaw coined the PC-plus tag, the world’s largest PC vendor announced plans which could have resulted in it entering a post-PC era with the disposal of its PC business. Since then, of course, it’s changed tack. Not only has it kept the PC operation, it has now merged the business with the imaging and print group. Depending on which way you look at it, this could reflect either a move to a PC-plus era (PCs plus printers) or a post-PC era (PCs are becoming less important so there’s no justification for a separate business division).
So where does HP stand on the whole post-PC/PC-plus debate? Well, after Cook’s comments at the iPad launch, the general manager of HP’s PC global business unit, James Moulton told Forbes that PCs were still indispensable, labelling tablets "terrific complementary devices" in the process. "And if you’re sending Junior off to college, the first computing product needed for homework is a PC," he added.
HP PSG Ireland country manager Marcus McKenna makes the entirely reasonable point that, if we are entering a post-PC world, no one has told buyers yet. He quotes figures from IDC that suggest global sales of PCs will increase 9.3% in 2012 compared to 2011 when 346.2 million PCs were sold. Some western markets might be slowing down, but emerging markets are growing rapidly. And if you compare iPad sales last year (63.2 million) to desktop PCs (112.4 million) and notebooks (209.6 million), it’s hard to definitively state a tipping point has arrived. As McKenna is only too keen to point out, if you combine the figures for PCs and notebooks, they outsold iPads by a ratio of 5:1.
Like Moulton, he sees the tablet as a complementary device. "I don’t know anybody who has given up their notebook and is exclusively using a tablet," he says. McKenna believes the advent of the ultrabook will have a significant effect on the market. "What will become the default device in two or three years time, will it be the tablet or the ultrabook?" he asks. Windows 8 will be "a significant enabler" for ultrabooks. "It’s crucial for vendors that Windows 8 is successful. If it delivers on the promise we will see huge growth in ultrabook sales. Yes, ultrabooks will have a price premium over tablets, but they will also have a premium in functionality as well."
Nevertheless, McKenna believes that "when the dust settles, the predominant form factors within the post-PC [yes, he did say it] world will be ultrabooks and tablets." And while the popularity of the tablet form factor in the consumer market will make it the default choice there, ultrabooks will have the biggest share in the commercial world.
But McKenna cautions that it’s important for partners to continue to offer client devices to customers because that’s "where the rubber meets the road and the user gets to interact with technology. "Any partner that walks away [from that] is going to struggle to engage with customers at the same level it had in the past. A lot will get squeezed because even if you can’t have a cloud deployment conversation or can’t have a managed services conversation, a lot of doors will stay wide open for a client discussion."
Not just PCs
It’s not just HP that’s rethinking the significance of PCs to its business. Last month, Michael Dell publicly announced that Dell, the poster-child of the PC business, was "not really a PC company" but an end-to-end solutions provider. Dell Ireland managing director Dermot O’Connell, says that it hasn’t been just a PC company for several years even if it’s always been referred to as "Dell, the PC company". Whereas 10 years ago, the PC was 90% of the deal for Dell and its customers, "now it’s all about making sure its manageable and deployed properly. We’ve automated many processes using technology in the system through a combination of hardware, software and services to create a solution".
The PC is still the main device for the commercial space, particularly in Ireland where there is "a huge desk-based population" working at desks or in call centres or as software developers. "A standard PC with a good screen and good ergonomics is still the best tool to get those jobs done," he argues. And when it comes to home users, notebooks are far and away the best selling PCs.
He is sceptical that tablets will replace notebooks. "I’m not really seeing that," O’Connell states. "It’s a great take-to-meeting tool but all those people are using something else when they get back to their desk to get the job done."
Patrick Ward, Windows business manager at Microsoft Ireland, likes to describe what is taking place as an "evolution in personal computing". Microsoft likes to use the phrase "the new world of work" where business workers can work anywhere, any time and on any device. He says the PC world provides choice for home users and businesses in terms of different form factors, different styles and different colours from a wide number of vendors.
And if we are entering a post-PC era, he argues, not a lot of people seem to know about it, citing the example of university workshops Microsoft is running to help students get the most from their PC which are heavily over-subscribed. The courses are designed to show attendees that "there is no personal computing experience that they can’t have on their PC," he says. "And they want to improve their skills because employers are looking for PC skills as a requirement."
The nub of his argument is that "there is nothing you can’t do on a PC that you can do on other devices but there’s a lot you can do on a PC that you can’t do on other devices. We see the PC playing a central part in the personal computing arena along with the proliferation of other devices." Going back to Jobs’ original analogy, you could argue the same pretty much applies to trucks and cars.
Channel use
From a channel perspective, Paul Bale, marketing manager at Sharptext, says the post-PC era has already arrived. "Just looking at how people use and work with information, we’re using smartphones, tablets, as well as laptops and desktops. They’re all computing devices and the conversations now are about how we can allow end users to use their various devices, wherever they need to, securely and efficiently." It’s a sign of how confusing things have become that his statement could apply equally to the PC-plus argument as well.
Nevertheless, recognising the growing importance of devices such as smartphones and tablets that fall outside the traditional definition of a PC to the PC channel, Sharptext has added them to its portfolio. "As a distributor, we are involved in supplying our reseller and retail customers with all the devices and also the solutions that allow end users to use them securely."
Outside of the actual hardware itself, three other factors are creating the foundations for the post-PC or PC-plus era: the internet, desktop virtualisation and cloud computing. All of them have made it easier to use devices other than PCs or laptops to access applications, data and services "anywhere, any time and from any device".
Edel Creely, managing director at Trilogy Technologies says the idea of a static device such as a PC on every desk at work and in every home has had its day. Desktop virtualisation and centralisation of applications and data, allied to better control and management, is making the argument of what device the user has irrelevant. There are still power users that need PCs to run heavy duty applications, so there isn’t a complete shift away. She describes it as "a blend", or a blurring between devices.
Whatever era we end up in, channel partners need to make sure they’re in a position to deliver the technology, services and the knowledge that customers require. And while we’re on the subject of terminology, given the fact desktop virtualisation is about delivering applications and data to users anywhere, any time and on any device, should we really still be calling it desktop virtualisation? Perhaps that’s a debate better left for another time.
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