The Post-PC Era: It’s Real, But It Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does
Forrester Research Senior Analyst Sarah Rotman Epps has posted a blog and video on the topic of how computing is changing. Ergo the “post-PC” era heralded by Steve Jobs at the iPad 2 launch is indeed underway, pointing to a future where computing form factors, interfaces, and operating systems will continue to diversify beyond even what we have today, but Ms. Epps says that the meaning of the Post-PC Era is misapprehended by most of us.
Looking back, Ms. Epps recalls that the “Post PC Era” phrase actually entered the public vernacular back in 2004 when IBM sold its PC unit and former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz told The New York Times that “We’ve been in the post-PC era for four years now,” noting that wireless mobile handset sales had even then already far surpassed PC sales around the world, and further that the post-PC concept can be traced back at least as far as 1999 when MIT research scientist and visionary David Clark gave a talk called “The Post PC Internet,” describing a future point at which objects like wristwatches and eyeglasses would be Internet-connected computing devices.
Ms. Rotman emphasizes that “Post PC Era does not mean that the PC is dead, and Forrester Research forecasts that even in the US, a mature market, consumer laptop sales will grow at a CAGR of 8% between 2010 and 2015, and desktop sales will decline only slightly. Moreover, she projects that even in 2015, when 82 million US consumers will own a tablet, more US consumers will still own laptops (140 million). However, as Forrester explains in a new report, it does mean that computing is shifting from:
• Stationary to ubiquitous
• Formal to casual
• Arms-length to intimate
• Abstracted to physical
Ms. Rotman notes that there are a host of technological innovations making the post-PC era possible, and in turn accelerating social change, and vice versa, but in the post-PC era, the PC is alive and well, but adapting to support computing experiences that are increasingly ubiquitous, casual, intimate, and physical, citing the new MacBook Air’s instant-on immediacy as an emblematic example of what’s coming and to some degree already here.
You can check it out Ms. Rotman Epps’ blog and video at:
http://bit.ly/mwvKYD