The iPad Is Affecting PC Sales – Discuss
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The iPad Is Affecting PC Sales – Discuss
Ha ha, there’s nothing like making a bold statement and then casting a little doubt over the proceedings is there . . . it’s great sport, but let’s just stop and think about this for a minute. Consumer PC Sales are down for just about the first time in history, even when Vista was released by Microsoft nothing happened like this, not even when the economy crashed down around the ears of the world, but there are other things going on in the world you know, and correlation does not prove causation (I remember that from my old psychology classes – just proves they weren’t a complete waste of time)!
Let’s make a bit of a timeline:
- June ’07 – Windows Vista introduced – PC Sales growth 20%
- March ’08 – PC Sales still growing by around 19%
- September ’08 – PC Sales growth up to 27%
- September ’09 – Windows 7 – PC Sales still grows by 19%
- December ’09 – PC Sales growth climbs to 33%
- March 10 – Still climbing to 37%
- September 10 – PC Sales growth drops to around the 10% mark
- December 11 – 0% growth for the first time ever (since we started this timeline anyway)
- March 11 – PC growth drops to minus 4%
Wonder what happened around that time? But, remember what I learned in psychology classes!
Is The iPad Affecting PC Sales
So is the iPad responsible? Maybe people are just generally feeling the pinch, and whereas they might like to update their PC every year or so they’re having to save their cash to buy other luxuries . . . food, utility bills, gas, clothes, you know the sort of thing which we all kind of rely upon. Then again, the iPad is so easy that even a toddler can swipe a game on it, so are people now turning their attentions to buying an iPad and downloading lots of free or five buck apps instead of having to pay a whole lot more for computer games and programs for their PC?
iPads have certainly revolutionized the way that we work, play and communicate with each other, crikey, it’s not that long since mobile phones were the size of a housebrick and were used for only one thing, speaking to each other . . . and we all know what happened with those! These days, one very lightweight, extremely portable tablet will do exactly the same as your desktop computer at home . . . often even better. I’m reminded of a famous quote “Computers in the future will weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” (Popular Mechanics, forecasting advance of science, 1949.) That’s a good one isn’t it? Even the chairman of IBM in 1943, Thomas Watson predicted that there was “a world market for around 5 computers” . . . we’ve got that many in our house!
