“There’s no question about it: the perils are deep and wide for companies whose primary business is making PCs,” Ben Bajarin writes for TIME Magazine. “There are many layers to the problem and unfortunately, the perfect storm hit the PC sector and there will be collateral damage.”
“The netbook showed many consumers that a simple, cheap notebook would suffice. Then the iPad came along and is the primary culprit for sucking value out of the PC industry,” Bajarin writes. “If we are all honest with ourselves, when we say tablets are to blame for the PC decline, we really mean the iPad. Tim Bajarin wrote a great column last week called the Revenge of Steve Jobs, where he lays out similar thinking.”
Bajarin writes, “Steve Jobs‘ creation brought the industry he could never dominate to its knees. The iPad has changed the conversation and brought Apple’s competitors onto a playing field where it has an unfair advantage. This new battleground will be crucial to the success of many who are entrenched in legacy markets.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Steve Jobs’ revenge – April 12, 2013
Microsoft’s stock takes beating after putrid Windows PC shipment reports – April 11, 2013
Apple Macintosh on the rise as Windows PC market plummets – April 11, 2013
Gartner: PC Market posts 11.2 percent decline in Q113; Apple Mac sales up 7.4 percent in U.S. – April 10, 2013
IDC: PC shipments post the steepest decline ever in a single quarter, down 13.9% in Q113 – April 10, 2013
And then there’s Windows 8. People are apparently paying $50 for an app that downgrades them to a Windows 7 interface. That should tell Ballmer something…but I’m sure it doesn’t.
o yeah, well just you wait till windows 9. it’s gonna knock ’em all outa the water. then you’ll all be crying.
Ballmer has lost his LEFT NUT and he still doesn’t feel a thing.
Do think an app that downgrades Windows 8 to Windows 7 will be anything but a blip in the Ballmer psyche?
A friend at a university said that Microsoft removed all copies of Win7 when Win8 came out. [You will use Win8…and you will like it!]
With the launching of iPad three years ago we know the coming downfall of the PC!!!
“unfair advantage” – really?
I wonder how many net books were actually sold. I did not see very many in the wild.
I work at a University, and I see lots of cheap netbooks in student’s hands. iPads are getting popular, judging by the number of campus iPad thefts we’ve had.
32 milion in 2010. 250.000 predicted for 2013. Talk about some decline. That market evaporated in 2 years.
What?
last person out of Redmond unplug the copiers.
I have to be honest… I was a doubter at first, but that wore off immediately after I touched the first iPad. I have a 2 and a 3. I have extensive overseas travel and really want a Mini for it, but know the moment I go get it, Apple will announce the Mini with Retina. I know we’re at the end of the first Mini cycle, but, but, but… I want one now!
You only need to visit Fry’s to see the decline of the PC. The mutation of PC’s into grotesque monstrosities with neon lights, plastic windows, bizarre cases and fans everywhere should tell you that they are spiraling towards death. Macintosh is the only class act left – everything else a mess of gimmicks and bloated specs.
Great comment and descriptive portrayal!
Some blame has to be directed at MS. They have not added any value to the PC. The sat on their monopoly and felt no urgency to add any new to make upgrading necessary. More and more people kept their old XP machines knowing there was really no reason to upgrade or buy a new machine. Most people can do what they need with a 5 or more year old machine.
MS did not feel any need to add any value to their product until it was too late.
Windows 8 is too little too late. Chrome and Android is going to eat it’s lunch on the low end, and Apple on the high end.
I agree. MS could have blown Apple out of the water- they had a huge advantage in the 90’s which they squandered (thank Heavens!). We, the devoted faithful, should actually be quite grateful to M$ for blowing it (do you know that even in Windows 8, you STILL cannot see the size of a folder in Windows Explorer??!!- It’s 2013- the Mac has had this feature since, when? 2000? earlier? How brain-dead is that?). Sadly, I still have to work with Windows (Apple, to the best of my knowledge, does not make an “embedded” version of MacOS, so there are still a lot of industrial applications for WIndows [sadly]). Perhaps one day we will finally see the extinction of Windows, but that day is still far off…
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
It’s not that they didn’t try. MS has spent hugely on R&D, but nothing meaningful has come from it. It’s really hard to do R&D and monetize it. Iterations are one thing, creating whole new classes of products is another. It takes a lot of balls to make the bets necessary to pull that off, maybe that’s what’s wrong with MS, ballmer’s left nut is missing and they can’t make the bets?
I think the problem is that companies – MS in the 90’s, Samsung now – are lost without copying Apple.
Jobs had it right. PCs become the trucks. There will always be a place for them. Many families have pickup trucks. Businesses have needs for many varieties of trucks. PCs will always be there
Apple has sold over 100 million iPads in 3 years. PC manufacturers sold 76 million PCs in this supposedly horrible quarter. (Paul Thurrott, Windows Weekly podcast)
100 million iPads only not counting mac sales and 76 million of all pc sales. Do understand your comment correctly? Just an off topic thought, but who would want to be a partner in Dell now? Talk about throwing money down the toilet.
PC’s will become more of a business machine than a consumer one in the years ahead and MS will have to be content with that. Microsoft has had the contempt of consumers and their needs for years being neither fish nor fowl. (Maybe just “foul.”)
Tim Bajarin is quoting HIMSELF? (Second paragraph, last sentence.)