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I was reading this thread and there are a couple of things here I would like to point out.
There is so much buzz around this tablet space and the "post pc era" (which is a term/concept that made me laugh ever since I heared Jobs use it for the first time in an obvious attempt to make it seem as if the PC is 'out of date') that I feel people are loosing perspective...
Let's look at some numbers, shall we...
91% of all computers in the world are running windows. That's well over 1.5 billion machines.
77% of all devices connecting to the internet are in fact windows machines. This is again well over a billion machines.
38% of those machines are running windows 7. Which is an incredible amount of licenses sold of microsoft's latest OS.
Considering these numbers... anyone who claims that microsoft is "declining" deserves nothing but ridicule.
Now, let's look at this tablet space...
In TOTAL, apple has sold little over 50 million ipads.
While that certainly is a big number which off course made them a load of cash, it pales in comparision to the sales figures of windows 7.
If we look at a global market with a potential of 2 billion... that 50 million is nothing. It's a niche market.
Even if we add up all tablets in the entire global market together, it still pales in comparision to the amount of licenses sold of windows 7.
All this talk about apple having "won" the tablet race is a gross exageration. The truth is that what we saw in this mobile computing market (not phones, but actual computing) are only baby steps.
Truth is that this "post pc era" is simply a move from bulky desktops to more portable computers. The problem with iOs and Android is that they are not offering an actual replacement for bulky desktops and laptops. ipads and droid tablets are a companion of bulky computers - NOT a replacement.
I don't know of a single person who threw out his computer and replaced it with a tablet. Not a single one. Why is that?
Simple... These tablets are what I like to call overglorified media-players.
95% of the apps on the stores are pure bullocks: fart apps, dumb games, social stuff,...
The Os's are much to simplified and limited. An ipad cannot replace a mac. But a windows 8 device.... IS a windows machine.
People have been calling Windows Vista a "fail". And they were right. For microsoft standards!
The truth is... if windows 8 "fails" just as much as windows vista.... Then windows 8 will instantly burry apple's AND google's market share.
Another thing I notice in the media is all this talk about how tablets are eating away laptop/desktop sales. I heavily disagree with that, although I certainly believe that some people postpone buying a new pc after buying an 800$ tablet.
But what is the actual cause of declining pc sales these past 2-3 years?
Well... I seem to remember that the world was/is in some financial crisis.
Hard disks, still widely used in desktops and laptops, have almost trippled in price since those floods in Thailand. How on earth can people simply ignore those 2 facts and simply blame declining sales on tablet sales?
One word: hype.
The fact of the matter is that a windows 8 device (most of which will come with a docking that allows you to attach big monitors, mouse and keyboard) is the only TRUE "post pc device".
A windows 8 device is an actual replacement for a real PC. It IS a real pc.
If you have such a "tablet", you can actually afford to NOT buy a laptop or desktop. Because your win8 device can be both.
Based on all this, here's my prediction for the next decade:
- Apple will continue being successfull in a consumer space and make a lot of money.
- The same goes for Google.
- The professional world will continue to run on windows.
- Home users who do more then post on facebook, check email and surf the web will continue buying windows machines.
To me, the future is obvious. The market share numbers I posted above will not change. Windows will continue to really dominate.
Windows 8 will be known as "another vista" and yet be more successfull then any other "mobile" system on the planet. Windows 9 will extend the new WinRT API's to the desktop (with which we engineers will create sandboxed desktop applications that WILL run on ARM, be distributed through the store and have sort of the same style as the Zune software) which will give window 9 similar sales as windows 7. Windows 10 or windows 11 will totally drop win32 support.
And by that time, we will have hardcore apple fanboys saying the same stuff they do today: apple invented tablets and microsoft stole everything, completely ignoring the fact that windows 8 and metro were allready in development before the first ipad was even released.
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