RSSHas the PC Become Antiquated?
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published April 27, 2007, 5:38 PM
In a recent interview with BetaNews, the chief researcher for IDC's Quarterly PC Tracker report -- which rates the relative market share of PC manufacturers in both the US and worldwide markets -- raised a serious question pertaining to the market growth figure around which much of IDC's reporting is based.
As last week's report noted, worldwide PC shipment growth stands at an annual rate of 10.9% by IDC's account, 2.4% higher than the firm expected it to be at the end of last year. That bump is on account of a number of factors, IDC's David Daoud believes, the onset of Windows Vista being among them, but perhaps more prominently, vendors like HP adopting a more direct approach to how to address their customers.
That new approach is giving HP some vital market differentiation against Dell. But Daoud thinks it may only be a short-term solution.
"How are you going to have HP...begin to address the needs of the female buyer, the teenager, the mobile professional, the ones that actually don't need that much computing power, etc., when you have mature, emerging, very much stratified markets going forward?" Daoud asked. "That's a challenge for the industry as a whole, not just Dell."
Diverse, stratified, smaller market segments, but lots of them - that's what the PC industry faces in the coming months, Daoud believes. If any manufacturer is to adopt a long-term market strategy for PCs, it may have to re-examine the entire question of why people would want PCs in the first place, and whether it's really the PC that vendors make today (flat monitor, keyboard, optical disc, hard disk, Windows) that people really want.
"We're still using the keyboards to enter data, to write out letters, to send an e-mail," he remarked. "It's pretty old, isn't it, if you start looking at the technology that we have? Think about that, for a moment. We have had for a long time this concept of the tablet PC, and no one has been able to crack that market. Why is that? Because no one has been willing to do the same thing that Apple has done for the iPod: own that market, take it to the next level. Think of it. We've had the speech recognition as an input interface for a long time, and yet no one has really taken that into consideration.
"So what we have here is, we have technology driven by Microsoft and Intel, when the PC industry has turned into a manufacturing base," Daoud continued. "Rather than think, 'How do we actually go to our customer and help them improve the user experience?' It's wonderful to have input through a keyboard, but what about creating new ways to input data? I know that's pushing it a little, but clearly we're still, the PCs that we have today are still the same PCs that we had when the industry created the PC in the late '70s."
Vendors today appear to be focused on defending and maintaining their intellectual property, Daoud argued, when that IP is centered around this concept of technology in a box. Moving away from this model and distinguishing oneself in the market may mean that a manufacturer must move literally outside this box.
"Apple didn't create the MP3 player," he reminded us. "But it has been able to create an ecosystem which brought the hardware, the software, the content, content delivery, marketing, ownership of the entire ecosystem. And on the PC side, the PC manufacturers have not yet done that in a way that would have them differentiate themselves."
In the very small computer space, Daoud pointed to the examples of Flipstart and OQO as companies that have successfully distinguished themselves in their respective spaces by changing the game, so that it plays by their rules. The broader PC market, he believes, is becoming just a broader multiple of little markets about the same size as theirs.
"I think the challenge for these companies going forward," IDC's David Daoud told BetaNews, "is how you move from being the best supply chain player in the space, the one that knows how to lower prices, lower costs, maximize the challenge, to actually innovate a little more, by looking at usage models a lot more than just looking at product design. I think usage model should determine product design."
So it sounds like David's saying that for companies like Dell, Lenovo, Acer, and Toshiba to move forward (the #2 through #4 players, by IDC's figures) they may have to start identifying and addressing niche markets, because the broader PC market has matured to the point of stagnation.
"Yea, to the extent that [it's] a consumer market," Daoud responded. "The business sector is a good example of where you could create a lot of innovation. I certainly don't mean that these companies are entirely lacking in innovation; in fact, if you look at what HP has been doing, it certainly has the blade PCs, it has a thin client business...But again, it's limited, to a certain extent, to a quarter of HP's large enterprise business.
"There's a lot more to be done in analyzing really what end users are looking for and looking at," Daoud concluded, though step one may be to examine "the models of these smaller companies that are looking at ways to branch out to enter the PC market through the back door."
This should be read as
"We are desperate to create some new areas where to suck people's money behind the idea of 'new and better'"
I hate them for trying to do so because none of the the alternatives are strong but they want to bring them somehow into the market.
How many times have you read about someone trying to picture sonmething as obsolete while it was not?
This is the pure soul of Capitalism itself.
Score: 0
|http://news.yahoo.com/s/...hi_te/mind_reading_toys
New Toys Reads Brain Waves (Remember Virginia Tech 04/16/07 RIP)
Do any of you know about the win rate of a micro biological organism residing in a PC tower in Silicone Valley playing the game TIC TAC TOE? Circa 2003, during the living PC's first 6 months of existance, not one human being had won.
Please read http://www.mahlers.com/scattered.htm
In memory of those fallen, Virginia Tech University.
Score: 0
|Another device used by millions worldwide with an antiquated interface is the car. The input/output interfaces were designed around a century ago and aside from refinements in detail have not yet been replaced. The steering wheel is over a century old, it needs to be replaced by a better means of steering the car.
The keyboard is a similar device. Typewriters are older than the car. The keyboard as a means of controlling the transfer of characters to the storage medium was created in several different forms in the beginning. The one that is standard around the world today is the result of decades of attempts to replace it.
The next input devices will work alongside the keyboard, just as the mouse does today. Using software the mouse can be used to enter text and the keyboard eliminated entirely ... of course the keyboard is much more convenient than selecting a char from a list, the mouse can do the job, but the keyboard is more efficient.
Voice command is reliable enough today to be an alternate input device, but it will always be subject to interference from illness & background noise. Whenever the environment prevents spoken command, the keyboard will be tapped.
Just like as the car has a stable, evolved basic form that morphs for special duties & efficiency the PC as a device is stabilized as a basic device. The OS will change, but it will always have a "file manager" though the title will change whenever an OS developer needs to proclaim that their file manager is not like all the others. However you will still store documents, read mail, make phone calls, listen to/watch, edit & record audio and video. More features will be added, but the concept of a machine that automates all these functions was developed in the 19th century ... what has come after the Difference Engine has been refinement and additional processing power to execute "stored instruction programs".
Many of the things computers do today would be miraculous to Mr. Babbage, but once the concept of having a machine execute instructions read from a storage device was created, all that was necessary was to list the instructions needed to automate the task and design hardware that could be controlled by the Computing Engine.
Mr. Babbage's Difference Engine included the concept of driving hardware. Though it was never built, there was a printer for the Difference Engine.
The reason for regular "improvements" is the same as the reason cars are improved every year...sales.
Score: 0
|The steering wheel is over a century old, it needs to be replaced by a better means of steering the car.
In process. It's called Drive by wire. Pick up a car mag once in a while. Lots of new stuff going on there...CVT, Drive by wire, etc.
Score: 0
|"The reason for regular "improvements".." I suspect that most of these "improvements" are artificially created advantages, a different and more agresive way of advertising, to "improve" soft and hardware producers benefits.
Score: 0
|Lots of improvements to the standard keyboard, whose design was intentionally arranged to limit the speed of input in order to reduce the frequency of jammed typewriter keys, do exist, starting with the Dvorák key arrangement to phonetic shorthand pads. And they have been around for almost as long.
Neither have caught on to any large degree.
We can lament the form, but until there is a truly elegant change that presents a truly compelling reason to migrate in spite of the retraining, or ideally, no retraining at all, I don't anticipate any mass exodus any time soon.
Score: 0
|Even drive-by-wire uses steering wheels. "drive-by-wire" just means no more mechanical linkage. The same thing has been around for years on accelerator pedals. That doesn't mean that there's any change to the pedal itself.
Score: 0
|meh. I still have a client who has windows 95 on one box, and windows 98 on 3 others into a Novelle server. He's not about to buy something new just because it's out there. He makes a ton of money with his system now, and that's all he cares about.
I mean, really, why upgrade when you don't have to ?
Except ME, of course, I upgrade mine a couple times a year ususally. heh.
Just can't seem to picture WII controls for my AMD system, though.
Score: 0
|If you allow games your computer is always "antiquated", if not full of viruses or out or order when your children are the users of it. Never put all your eggs in the same basket...
Score: 0
|LMFAO
The pc is here to stay....atleast as long as we have the means to generate electrical power. It will no doubt take on many forms and maybe some new names, but it's not "antiquated". Only a blind idiot would think that.
Score: 0
|I think it is already "out" to use a computer for all imaginable purposes. When you use the same knife for bread, meat and fish it generally means that you've got only one. If you can afford it you'd rather have a play station for games; an state-of-the-art media center for listening music or watching films; the best mobile to phone and a wide plasma receiver and or with the most sophisticated decoder to watch terrestrial or satellite TV. Specific devices are more solid, perfect and stable, no need to worry about software, viruses, updates, patches etc. IMHO in the future the computer will return to its initial condition, i.e essentially a rather static device for corporations, governement, big and small enterprises and all kind of proffesional apps, and of course for the domestic use of databases, computing, presentations, word processing and for the always neccesary access to the Internet. But in any case it came to stay and will always be an essential element in human life.
Score: 0
|What a crock.
My E6700 Core 2 Due might well get over-taken soon but 'antiquated'?
As they say ooop north in the UK,
'bag-a-s***e' (or 'sack of cac' if you prefer).
Score: 0
|Darn.....just when I just bought a new laptop too!
Score: 0
|Oh dear - and I'm also told that we're coming to the end of Science as well.
Quick - everyone panic!
Sigh
Score: 0
|The average consumer in the future will have just a console that he/she will use to watch TV , make a phone call , play vidio games , etc...... no software to install it will all be done from some huge massave data base someware. Want to buy the latest Game? Scan yer thumb print and 199.99 will be taken out of your electronic account. This console will control the enviroment of your house,how much carbon you use and how much beer ya drink.........
Oh and and it will alert you at the proper time to take your meds , go to pee and have sex !
Score: 0
|Just because something is possible, does not mean it will happen.
Speculate all you want, but when serious innovation occurs (which is what we need), many speculations become silly ideas.
Score: 0
|I still believe there are an increasing number of people building their own systems. I have an old Dell XPS PC, but the rest of my systems I built myself, including my server. I like knowing what I have.
Aesthetics are also important to me. I want the systems I use to be beautful and unique in design. Cases have become very radical in design and that makes my computer room a beautiful place to be.
Score: 0
|I dont see computers lasting another year, this internet thing is just a fad and barely anyone uses it.
Score: 0
|looooool
Score: 0
|congratulations Hollywood, you have owned this story.
Score: 0
|Sorry, but the proper word is "internets"...
Remember, its a series of tubes that stuff passes through to get places. Tubes you see, tubes!
Score: 0
|Turtles! All the way down!
Score: 0
|The average consumer looks at the PC as an appliance - a toaster if you will...
All they do is email, surf and download music. You can do that with a computer from the 90's.
Id say maybe 10% of the people that buy computer's or computer hardware actually buy high end because they need high end. Who the hell needs 4 GB of ram to read email and watch youtube?
Score: 0
|you're obviously not thinking about college students, engineers, office workers, artists, musicians, youtube video creators, bloggers, video game designers. I mean jeez all these people are not "average consumers" .... I hope your first in line to get a iphone, ladylust.
Score: 0
|I can blog from a 486 laptop running windows 95 :P
Score: 0
|Besides play modern games there is really nothing I do on my computer now that I could not do on the 386DX-40 running Windows 3.1 PC that I had in the early 90's and I AM an engineer.
Ah... the good old days. Trumpet Windsock, Mosaic, Gopher, Lynx, Telnet, 14.4k dialup...
Score: 0
|College Students, Office Workers and bloggers can get anything all the work done on windows 98. The others go into the 10% I was speaking of. Trust me.. for every "creative user" there are 100 lamebrain users that do nothing but the net.
I own a computer hardware business (cdnerds.com) and fix computers on the side. 99.9999% of the people that have high end computers that I work on, do nothing more then email, chat with friends, use MS word and play the free games with windows. They think their computer is broken when the internet is slow.
Score: 0
|I said the 90's.. that includes 98,99 - your thinking of 91..
Score: 0
|I agree with you, a computer from the 90`s would be all the average consumer needs to email and surf. But everybody is in such a hurry these days. With a quad core processor and 4gig of ram, they can do nothing, faster. LOL
Score: 0
|For your average non-tech user especially, PC's've entered a temporary frustrating phase:
Monopolists in OS / hardware / broadband have seriously lagged in bringing the latest advancements to mainstream, resulting in the average user not being able to accomplish what they expect or want in a timely manner, if at all.
Add to that secondary adverse effects resulting from glitches in new releases, proprietary standards, slow dissemination to all areas, etc., and we have thus entered a sort of growth limbo.
We should see a renewed sales spurt when:
1. Broadband, wired & wireless / up & downstream(esp. the upstream & wireless), reaches "widespread availability at the speeds only seen now in scattered areas in leading-edge countries"
2. Ditto for 64 bit OS, software AND hardware platform--& NOT the newest x86 systems currently available...those are way behind the tech curve.
So look for a growth explosion in the teens decade, beginning somewhere between 2010-2012.
Score: 0
|The problem with PC's is not that they are a idea that is getting old. But rather the old dudes that still are in charge making them. With the release of Vista one thing is still clear to me. These guys don't have a clue what we want. They spent millions and years to release this bloated OS when they should consider revamping the PC model from scratch.
Let's start with how easy it is to break a OS or any software on it for that matter. The OS itself should be located on a seperate drive that is not only secure from anything but impossible to delete. Thus making issues a thing of the past. A good virus or more of a issue, my children who like to fiddle and then things start to not work cause they didnt realize they just delete stuff they shouldnt have. Pc's just need to work and work well without the hiccups that happen all the time. Much like to automobile that hasnt changed much at all since the model T. We need to really redesign the PC from the ground up. And i mean everything. Make it really user friendly. Not just toss the words arround like they dont matter. I'm a tech nerd but everyone i know isnt. so i got my work cut out for me cause they always need help. and the fact is they dont wanna learn how to do it themselves. So the PC industry needs to stop adding eye candy to a old idea and come up with a new idea.
Score: 0
|Ah, but what you say bigsexy makes sense, and corporations have no idea what sense is. As you noted, almost no one asked for much of the pure junk that is Vista and Office 2007. The ribbon? Aero? Those are Scooby-Doo ideas — you know, the kind that make you go "Hruh?!"
Score: 0
|Actually Intel designed the EFI Bios and specifications and then added Vanderpool Virtualization Technology to its CPUs which could allow the PC to be used 24/7 with no interruptions and with multiple OSes running from different drives/partitions at the same time, with a low-level hardware hypervisor linked to Vanderpool/EFI... with an OS running the hypervisor/being the hypervisor itself directly on the EFI Bios...
The problem with all of this is that it hasn't been delivered,yet. The specifications are there, the technology is there but Intel hasn't pushed it at all. We still rely on virtual machine software like VMWare,VirtualPC and such while everything could be managed by the EFI and Vanderpool in hardware... but EFI is available on Apple Intel Mac computers..(and not offering full features like an OS/Hypervisor to use Vanderpool properly) not yet on motherboard PCs and there is no sign of either an high quality low-level always running Intel OS (just like the Sony own PS3 OS being the hardware hypervisor itself,pretty similar approach...) or a modified BSD/Linux or a realtime OS running on EFI...
What Intel is doing with all this technology it's unclear, they have designed it but are not using it and this is a big mistake.
Score: 0
|Intel is a hardware company. Try as they might, many of their network/software initiatives have been failures.
Also their model isn't proven. It takes time for new tech like PC management to be taken seriously by corp America.
Score: 0
|" They spent millions and years to release this bloated OS when they should consider revamping the PC model from scratch. "
This is a good point. You all realise we are still dealing with the 640K barrier!!!
Sure modern OS's deal with it more elegently but they should not have to deal with it at all.
Score: 0
|I third that.
Score: 0
|haha be nice.
Score: 0
|besides, if you just talk to a freaking computer you just get more lazy than you already are, so i think that mouse and keyboard are good you dumbSH!T of Scott M. Fulton, III
Score: 0
|Woah, calm down there dude. Scott is simply asking a question to a researcher, and the text of the article related to speech recognition is a quote from Daoud, not from Scott.
I think he poses an interesting question about input devices anyway. After all, we have made great strides in computing yet we still use the same method of input designed for typewriters from decades ago.
I just saw a lab presentation from Intel talking about their 80 core research processor, and Microsoft's lab showing off some "Minority Report" style usability with projections and enlarging/shrinking by moving your hands.
Who knows what the future could bring. Either way, writers are supposed to ask the questions, get the answers, and bring about discussion from the readers.
Score: 0
|Nobody wants to talk to their computer. It is not very accurate, it looks stupid and probably feels the same, and is intrusive in public places. Speech recognition will NEVER replace keyboards.
Score: 0
|Let's get to input:
The keyboard is 100% accurate in 99.9999% of environments.
Voice recognition in 99% of environments is less than 95% accurate. You can't walk up to a PC and use voice recognition with any level of reliability unless you train it.
Any other proposed input method isn't available anywhere near wide scale. Input/output systems need a format that is realily available and easy to use to gain mass adoption. The keyboard is here to stay for at least a decade more.
Why a PC? It's the most advanced technology available, it's modular, and it's ready for the future. We might scale it out or down, say by using thin clients, but it's going to be with us for some time yet. You can't bring forth mass pixels without CPU/GPU to back it up.
Score: 0
|You said it MJM; this guy just doesn't get it. He must be new to the whole 'puter thang.
Score: 0
|Mjm,
What's a keyboard?
Score: 0
|Rerun, story, circa 1996.
Score: 0
|Exactly right. We don't have others way of input because they don't work reliably. Put more resources into that and maybe we will change. However I certainly can't see speaking to my computer for things I can do faster typing. I do think touch input of some sort could easily be done and might add to the regular PC experience.
Score: 0
|I agree. I think some people missed the point of the article. The point isn't that people are dumb for not using the alternative-input mechanisms. The point is that they need to be better designed so they're a viable alternative to the keyboard. I'd point to the research that's going into a mouse that can be controlled optically as an example of someone trying to innovate with input. I also remember reading about a language translation device that can read your mouth and tongue movements to interpret your speech rather than you having to actually speak into it so that the conversation is more fluid and each person doesn't have to say their entire statement then listen to it played back. Something like this combined with "text"-to-speech software might actually be a solution for the awkwardness of talking to a computer in public. Not saying that you'll look completely normal, but at least it won't be audibly disturbing and if it catches on, then everyone will be doing it. Think of how ridiculous people look wearing bluetooth headsets, yet it's got a good market share.
Score: 0
|You make some interesting points. If you think about every day operation with a computer, there might be times when speech recognition/commands might get in the way. Serious time and research needs to be put in to implementing these concepts in a way that they work for power users and average users, even elderly people or young children. With computers there really is unlimited potential. The only difficulty is finding a way to execute our ideas.
Score: 0
|"How are you going to have HP...begin to address the needs of the female buyer, the teenager, the mobile professional, the ones that actually don't need that much computing power, etc., "
You sell it better.
We still use keyboards because voice recognition is still utterly s*** and you have to spend hours setting it up.
The PC as we know it won't die for a long, long time.
Score: 0
|You sell it better? Agreed, but even more important, a computer is not gender specific, and to say that because you are a female or a teen, or what ever other excuse they come up to say one needs less computing power is insulting to say the least. Remember that thing about only 64k that would be all we would ever need?
Score: 0
|