[Updated] The rise and fall of personal computing

Jan 17, ’12 11:29 AM

Author Horace Dediu Categories Industry

Thanks to Jeremy Reimer I was able to create the following view into the history of computer platforms.

I added data from the smartphone industry, Apple and updated the PC industry figures with those from Gartner. Note the log scale.

The same information is available as an animation in the following video (Music by Nora Tagle):

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h-C6u4yLj4

This data combines several “categories” of products and is not complete in that not all mobile phone platforms are represented. However, the zooming out offers several possible observations into the state of the “personal computing” world as of today.

We cannot consider the iPad as a “niche”. The absolute volume of units sold after less than two years is enough to place it within an order of magnitude of all PCs sold. We can also observe that it has a higher trajectory than the iPhone which became a disruptive force in itself. Compare these challengers to NeXT in 1991.
The “entrants” into personal computing, the iPad, iPhone and Android, have a combined volume that is higher than the PCs sold in the same period (358 million estimated iOS+Android vs. 336 million PCs excluding Macs in 2011.) The growth rate and the scale itself combine to make the entrants impossible to ignore.
There is a distinct grouping of platform options into three phases or eras. The first lasting from 1975 to 1991 was an era of rapid growth but also of multiple standards and experiments. It was typical of an industry in emergence. The personalization of computing brought about a new set of entrants. The second phase lasted between 1991 and 2007 and was characterized by a near monopoly of Microsoft, but, crucially one alternative platform did survive. The third phase can be seen as starting five years ago with the emergence of the iPhone and its derivatives. It has similarities to the first phase.

We can also look at the data through a slightly different view: market share. Share is a bit more subjective because we need to combine products in ways that are considered comparable (or competing).

First, this is a “traditionalist” view of the PC market as defined by Gartner and IDC, and excluding tablets and smartphones.

This view would imply that the PC market is not changing in any substantial way. Although the Mac platform is gaining share, there is no significant erosion in the power of the incumbent.

Second, is a view where the iPad is added to the traditionalist view.

This view is more alarming. Given the first chart, in order for the iPad to be significant, it would need to be “visible” for a market that already ships over 350 million units. And there it is. If counted, the iPad begins to show the first disruption in the status quo since 1991.

The third view is with the addition of iPhone and Android.

This last view corresponds to the data in the first graph (line chart). If iOS and Android are added as potential substitutions for personal computing, the share of PCs suddenly collapses to less than 50%. It also suggests much more collapse to come.

I will concede that this last view is extremist. It does not reflect a competition that exists in real life. However, I put this data together to show a historic pattern. Sometimes extremism is a better point of view than conservatism. Ignoring this view is very harmful as these not-good-enough computers will surely get better. A competitor that has no strategy to deal with this shift is likely to suffer the fate of those companies in the left side of the chart. Treating the first share chart as reality is surely much more dangerous than contemplating the third.

I’ve used anecdotes in the past to tell the story of the disruptive shift in the fortunes of computing incumbents and entrants. I’ve also shown how the entry of smart devices has disrupted the telecom world and caused a transfer of wealth away from the old guard.

The data shown here frames these anecdotes. The data is not the whole story but it solidifies what should be an intuition.

[Update]

Additional platforms added to the first chart.

‹ Previous Post Apple as top personal computer vendor

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http://www.aqute.com AquteIntel

Great analysis. You seem to assume though that there is a fixed market share at which iPhone/iPad eat away, presumably that’s the fixed population of buyers. An alternative interpretation is that as people buy multiple devices, and spend more time in front of devices than before, the market overall is growing.
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  I agree with your interpretation and cannot imagine myself holding the assumption that there is a single pool of buyers.
  - Doji
    
    Horace, thanks for all the valuable insight.
    
    I have a question about apple inc reluctance to redo the near perfect iPod disruption when it comes to iPad and specially iPhone.
    
    When the comfort of high profit margin while android is disrupting the lower price point in plain sight
    
    IpAd and iPhone account nearly 70% of apple revenue but apple is only looking the sky not the earth?
  - http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
    
    Don’t assume that Apple finds comfort in anything. There are many constraints to the phone market that restrict what Apple can do, especially in a short time frame of a few years. The distribution and dependencies on local considerations make scale a problem, especially when the product is updated every year. The ramp for production that has to take place every year limits how many phones they can produce. Given time, I think Apple will address the lower price points but they will do it with an integrated offering of service and product.
  - Anonymous
    
    Exactly right. They’ve literally been ramping production ever since they started manufacturing phones, and they still haven’t caught up to demand for the high end!
- Anonymous
  
  Yes, the market is growing, but all that growth is driven by mobile devices. Just like how the growth of the desktop PC has long since peaked, with all growth in recent years being driven by laptops. The peak of the conventional PC is plain to see, and now comes the contraction.
  
  Most users are buying multiple devices, because most of them have not yet learned that they can perform all the computing tasks they require from their mobile device. As data migrates into the cloud and mobile software improves, mobile devices will become more capable, and more users will decide not to replace that old PC. The conventional PC will remain, greatly diminished, to serve only the most demanding users.
  - http://www.aqute.com AquteIntel
    
    Agreed. I was sort of arguing that PCs aren’t as threatened as the charts make out, but that’s slightly moronic – they’ve obviously peaked. The prophecies about mobile computing that tech execs made during the past ten years have come true.
  - Anonymous
    
    First of all, note that the scale is logarithmic in the y axis. What looks like a negative curve is probably a positive curve with the tail end moving to a straight line in a linear chart. of course, the “paper” you’d need to chart the info linearly would probably be several stories high….
    
    Second, if you include OSX machines as PC’s, then clearly PC’s as a catagory are still growing. And if you include iPads as PC’s, the catagory is growing like Topsy!
  - Anonymous
    
    I do consider mobile devices which run a modern smartphone OS to be the evolution of the PC, but one only needs to look at the past couple of years of Gartner reports to see that conventional PCs (desktops and laptops) are beginning their decline, even when you factor in Mac growth.
    
    This is how disruption tends to go. First you get the non-users, people who never saw the value of a conventional PC but do see the value of a smartphone or tablet. This group can be seen in the stalled growth of conventional PCs. Then you get the low-value customers, which would be the netbook crowd. Then, as your disruptive product gets better and better, you seize the mid-value customers, which would be people who mostly use their PCs for document editing, internet communication and light gaming.
    
    At the end, the only people left will be the high-value customers, people who really need a keyboard and mouse and/or powerful computer to do their jobs. And with expanding cloud services and some creative docking solutions, even those users might not be safe.
    
    Laptops have been quietly disrupting desktops for a while now. They’re less powerful, less reliable, and more expensive than desktops, which sounds like a worse product, but people buy them anyway because the new axis of value is mobility. Whether you want to call them PCs, post-PCs, or just mobile devices, tablets and smartphones are the next step, and they are going to gobble up a lot of the conventional PC market.
http://twitter.com/duncanwilcox Duncan Wilcox 

Why do you say the competition between smartphones and traditional PCs doesn’t exist in real life?

For some people the smartphone is all the computing they need. Steve Jobs’ truck vs. car analogy is just a first step of a specialization process, computing will become ubiquitous and with 100% penetration when it disappears and permeates smart objects we use daily.

Smartphones are PCs specializing as phones, and while specialization means they don’t do everything PCs do, it does mean that if that’s all you need, you actually don’t need a PC.

Siri will work for even more specialized objects, and appeal to even more people by virtue of disappearing inside, and adding smarts to, objects you don’t think of as PCs today.
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  There is competition for the job to be done but there is no competition in terms of purchase intent for computers.
  - Harvey
    
    We assume this but why not let the data show it instead?
  - http://twitter.com/duncanwilcox Duncan Wilcox 
    
    That’s true if your starting point is the traditional PC market, and the job they’re hired to do is implied to be everything PCs can do. If you had started with smartphones, added the iPad and finally added PCs it would still be an extremist view, but the implied job to be done would be different.
    
    There are many jobs to be done that either a PC or smartphone can be hired to do, which is why there’s overlap in markets and sales data is ultimately comparable. Directly comparing sales data is extremist and flawed only if you consider the market, meaning “the space of products competing for purchase intent”, to be static.
    
    It’s impossible to slice the sales data in a way that expresses the mix of features, tradeoffs and jobs to be done for which purchasers pick a PC, an iPad or a smartphone, but the respective growth curves seem to confirm the intuition that the mix is shifting towards more flexible, more mobile, simpler to use devices (as has always happened in 60 years of computing history), and that the featureset (including simplicity) is appealing to a broader audience.
  - http://twitter.com/e_orione Emilio Orione
    
    I think that smarphones added new users to the computer market, they inflated the computer market and data is comparable in the new market.
  - http://twitter.com/daveeinhorn David Einhorn
    
    I’m not so sure. As you’ve talked about yourself a lot of time spent on PCs really takes place in browsers. Information searching (prices, news) and communication (SMS, IM, email, twitter, Facebook, etc.) can take place on cheap Android phones. I have no idea how good the browser is on a $100 Chinese Android phone, but no matter how bad it is, it’s a lot better than having no access at all. Of course this requires wireless broadband at reasonable prices, but that should be rolled out shortly because of cheap Chinese LTE network equipment.
    
    I’ve forgotten where I found this bit of info, but I saw some tech bloggers discuss adoption of $100 Android phones among the poor in the US. First time internet users in the “1st world”. This is huge and I know you know it, so why not call a spade a spade and admit that for entirely new computing users, smart phones compete with PCs on communication, information gathering and content delivery but not on content creation. Of course that is somewhat untrue. I saw the death of Gaddafi first on youtube, recorded by several cheap phones in possession of rank and file rebels. That _is_ content creation. News is being disrupted already.
    
    Edit: Oh and thanks for the charts they’re great.
- http://twitter.com/alberthartman Albert Hartman
  
  This actually goes to the heart of the native apps versus web apps dilemma. Some people feel the HTML5 container will evolve to encompass everything you need, and developers can write to just a single platform. Others believe that the world will fragment into specialized and dedicated devices that will have native apps tuned for them.
  
  My own opinion is that as all devices become intelligent and evolve as good as possible by using electronics, their designs will diverge depending on the tasks they are directed to. A one-size-fits-all approach will not be necessary since a customized implementation won’t be so hard to make in the future. So I think the native app wins in the longterm.
Kizedek

That’s true — to an extent. But the “assumption” that you might all too often slip into the place of Horace’s “assumption” seems to be that there will be some kind of status quo regarding “jobs to be done”:

True, someone may purchase an iPad and continue to own a PC for years to come. Entirely expected. However, he may quickly find himself doing most “traditional PC jobs” on simple, inexpensive apps…

OK, he has a PC, but is he going to purchase Office at every upgrade or with every new PC purchase? Or, is he going to find that Pages, Keynote and Numbers for iPad, at 9.99 a crack is not only “good enough”, but actually preferable?

This is why MS needs to be afraid. They need to see the big picture acurately and prepare for it. Many wonder why they have not provided many more/better apps of their own for iOS.
- Kizedek
  
  Sorry, that was a reply to Duncan Wilcox. Should have been threaded underneath.
  - Kizedek
    
    Sorry, once again (another poster slipped in between as I posted) — actually a reply to AqueIntel.
- Anonymous
  
  I have taken to using my iMac App Store to download inexpensive apps, including Pages for the Mac. I own an iMac 27″‘, an iPad 2, and an iPhone 4 (my wife got the iPhone 4s; I have to wait a year). I use them all interchangeably, and it’s nice to be able to use the same apps on the three different devices – which I can afford to do because they’re separately really inexpensive.
  - Anonymous
    
    Just to clarify, I mean the apps are really inexpensive….
  - Noneofyour
    
    You have to save due to the money spent on those over priced Mac’s.
  - Anonymous
    
    Mac’s, or Macs?
  - Anonymous
    
    ROFLMAO! You can always tell someone who’s never bought a Mac….
  - Just Iain
    
    Sacto_Joe, not every ‘over-priced’ Mac lasts longer than the average PC but they do sell for lot more if you want to get rid of them. Darn it, even our internal Trolls are nice.
  - AnotherNetNarcissist
    
    Over priced Mac’s what? What is it that belongs to a Mac that is over priced? I don’t understand!
- Noneofyour
  
  Or they will go the open source route Openoffice, Gimp…..the list goes on. Why would they want to pay anything. ( if money is a concern they certainly won’t be buying Mac’s- 2-4 times the cost of a PC)
  - Anonymous
    
    This is an argument that Mac people have had for decades with PC people, and I certainly don’t intend to rehash it here. However, MAYBE i’ll continue the conversation if you find me the equivalent of a MacBook Air for 1/2 the price. And while you’re at it, make sure it is virus free, has aluminum uni-body construction, is drop-dead gorgeous, has impeccable service and support, and comes loaded with equivalents of all the software the Air comes with.
http://twitter.com/hypothesard Hypothesard

While we’re at adding existing successful *devices* on Apple part and *platform* on Google’s part, why not also add the iPod touch to an additional graph and make a *full section* for iOS, after all Android *begins* to be used in non-Smartphone/tablet *Portable Media Player* (Samsung and Sony if my memory serves)

I know, i know Apple doesn’t release detailed numbers on their *iPod* category
But there are extrapolations out there : iPhone and iPad numbers are known, so are iOS numbers (more or less) so the number should be
iPod touch = iOS – (iPhone+iPad)

Great work
Thanks
- Anonymous
  
  Yep. As I posted later on, the last chart is missing the iPhone Touch.
  - http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
    
    It’s in the updated version.
  - Anonymous
    
    Thanks!
  - http://twitter.com/hypothesard Hypothesard
    
    Mulțumiri, Domnule Dediu
  - http://twitter.com/hypothesard Hypothesard
    
    *iPhone touch* is a nice typo
http://twitter.com/formasymphonic formasymphonic

Excellent data as always Horace, but in the current context wouldn’t it make more sense to replace “PC” with WinTel?

…and on a semi-related note, post W8 will you be planning to track Wintel devices and WoA devices separately or will they still be counted together? (sales data dependant, of course)

I think that data would be interesting to in regards to considerations of what the market is hiring those devices for and context of overall industry trends
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  I did not want to use WinTel because many of the PCs shipped don’t include Windows. I’m going with Gartner’s definition of the PC because they are the source of recent data used in the chart. I’ll have to see how they categorize W8 when it ships.
http://twitter.com/miusuario Omar Moya

Very interesting figures, but with the addition of smartphones, Symbian should be present there. And then, the figures would look really shocking, isn’t it?
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  You need to think of the two mobile platforms as proxies for all smartphones. There are many which are not included like BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.
  - http://twitter.com/miusuario Omar Moya
    
    I’m with you on the relevance of iOS and Android compared to other platforms. However, in terms of volumes, Symbian was leading this surge of mobile PC’s, while Blackberry and Windows Mobile were not that relevant in terms of volumes. Symbian started this split before iOS or Android. Then, I’d expect to see Android and iOS eating Symbian’s share. I don’t think it’s fair to just show iOS and Android coming out of nowhere, I’d prefer to include Symbian, as its share was more than relevant.
http://antoinerjwright.com Antoine RJ Wright

what does that look like when Nokia is added? Seems like there would be a much more defined shift seen if their feature and smartphone dominance over the last decade was put into view.
http://twitter.com/jamesburland James Burland

I’d expect to see TVs added to the list within the next 2 or 3 years. Clearly we are about to hit phase transition. Could traditional Windows PCs soon become machines only purchased and used for running Office in enterprise?
- http://twitter.com/drostyboy steven
  
  interesting. did you see the samsung smart tv announcement at ces? they appear to be working with windows and google, so i am not sure which os they will run, but you could well imagine a new generation of smart devices (tv, refrigerator, etc.) potentially eating even further into that share.
  - Anonymous
    
    I don’t see it. Phones have a 2 year contract with subsidies. The incentive for upgrading isn’t there for fridges and tvs. And that model may never be applied because you don’t need to pay someone to install a phone in your hand.
    
    It’ll take 10 more years before we switch to smart devices. iPv6 has to roll out completely. All the TVs have to be requipped, etc etc.
    
    might be simpler to create an api standard so TVs can be DUMB terminals and be told what to do by more faster and intuitive UI and HI.
  - jawbroken
    
    Not sure why you think IPv6 will require replacement or upgrading of devices or that people generally pay someone to install their television.
Watcher

How much of this is US centric and how much is that relevant? Couldn’t population and economic changes account for the difference in volume?
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  The data is global.
Pieter

The reality is that many users still prefer pc’s for certain tasks. Soon slate devices and smartphones will have the ability to support external keyboards, large screens, external hard drives, enhanced operating systems, etc, further eroding the need for “conventional” pc’s. How does Steve Ballmer get to sleep at night?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Shameer-Mulji/1685212657 Shameer Mulji
  
  ”
  How does Steve Ballmer get to sleep at night?”
  
  It’s called Windows 8. I honestly believe Windows 8 will be very successful. At least 50% of Windows users are still running WinXP. These users are ripe to move over to Windows 8 for the simple reason that WinXP will be expired some time 2014. Many of these users still use legacy apps, which allow them to run on any Intel-based Win8 PC plus they will be able to run the new Metro-based apps. This scenario covers tens, if not hundreds of millions, of users; especially those that have to run Office 2007 / 2010, nevermind all the line of business apps that have to be supported.
  
  The real challenge for MS will be Win8 tablets that run on ARM architecture. These will run only the Metro apps & will compete directly with the iPad & Android tablets.
  - http://kaizenity.blogspot.com/ FalKirk
    
    Windows 8 is a VERY interesting topic. Without arguing with your position, let me pose some possible questions concerning the probable success of Windows 8.
    
    Will the changes in Window’s 8 be enough to entice current Window’s owners to upgrade?Will legacy apps truly run (and run well) on all Windows 8 tablets or will they only run on larger, battery inefficient, Intel powered tablets?Can legacy Windows mouse driven apps really be made compatible with touched based tablet apps or are they inherently incompatible?
    
    Apple has two operating systems. iOS runs on all of Apple’s tablets (iPod touch, iPhone and iPad) while OS X runs their notebooks and desktops. Microsoft is trying to run their phones on Windows Phone 7 and both their tablets and their notebooks/desktops on Windows 8. Microsoft is betting the house on the proposition that one operating system can power both the tablet computer and the desktop computer.
    
    Should be interesting.
  - Anonymous
    
    You’re right. I fail to understand why MS is blind to the fact that cramming a full OS is not workable in a tablet; not that they haven’t tried.
    
    iOS, after all, is derived from OS X. Why can’t MS copy that logic and create a lighter OS for mobile devices? It’s an open secret that they are excellent at copying Apple.
  - http://kaizenity.blogspot.com/ FalKirk
    
    “I fail to understand why MS is blind to the fact that cramming a full OS is not workable in a tablet…”-barryotoole
    
    They’re not blind to the problem. They have no choice. If they want to keep their Windows monopoly, they MUST make Windows relevant on tablets. Following Apple’s path and splitting the Operating Systems between tablets and desktops simply isolates Microsoft’s existing monopoly (and cash cow) on desktops.
    
    Microsoft MUST find a way to make Windows relevant on the tablet else they lose their lock-in (Windows compatibility), they lose their monopoly, they lose their cash cow and they lose their dominant position in the PC market.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Shameer-Mulji/1685212657 Shameer Mulji
    
    ”
    Will the changes in Window’s 8 be enough to entice current Window’s owners to upgrade?”
    
    There are tens (if not hundreds) of millions of business users that still use WinXP and rely on MS Office to create / share / collaborate documents with. As long as these businesses are still reliant on using legacy LOB apps and Office, I don’t see them jumping to any other platform except Win8 running on Intel processors. For those businesses / business users that have moved to Win7, I don’t foresee many of them upgrading for the simple reason that most of them just recently upgraded to Win7.
    
    “Will legacy apps truly run (and run well) on all Windows 8 tablets or will they only run on larger, battery inefficient, Intel powered tablets?”
    
    From the information that’s available from MS, Windows 8 will only run legacy apps on Intel-based devices, be it tablet, notebook, desktop. ARM-based devices will not support / run Windows legacy apps. This is tentative so it may change. This is where the real challenge for Windows 8 lies, is on devices running the ARM architecture. It’s with these devices that Win8 will go up against Android & iOS.
    
    “Windows mouse driven apps really be made compatible with touched based tablet apps or are they inherently incompatible?”
    
    Right now mouse driven legacy apps do work in Win8 although the solution is not that elegant from what I’ve seen. We’ll have to wait until late February, when Win8 beta is officially available, to see if MS has made any improvements to this.
    
    The best thing that MS has done with Win8, at least in regards to the new Metro apps, is that developers that write Metro apps can have their apps run unmodified on Win8 tablets, notebooks, desktops. That’s a great boon for developers and consumers who will purchase apps through the Win8 app store.
    
    Right now if I buy iWork on iPad, I have to pay again for iWork on Mac because there’s two different environments and app stores. With Win8 Metro apps, not so. If I’m bullish on Win8 it’s because it’s very well architected. The big question is, can MS market Win8 well & convince consumers & businesses to move to this platform. I’m confident
  - http://kaizenity.blogspot.com/ FalKirk
    
    Good discussion, Shameer. I Hope we get to continue this dialog in future articles.
    
    Unlike you, I think that Microsoft has taken the wrong path, but it is a path that they were forced to take if they wanted Windows to remain relevant. I could be wrong. Time (and the introduction of Windows 8 to the world) will tell.
  - Darwinphish
    
    Many of those XP users are running legacy apps that do not run under Windows 7 and they are unlikely to run under Windows 8. And any legacy app that can be run in XP mode can be run using Parallels.
    
    Microsoft’s fundamental problem is that they have not been able to figure out how to leverage their current dominance with traditional PCs into success with newer computing devices. Being locked into Windows on the desktop does not preclude one from using a non-Windows phone or tablet. In fact, from my experience, the iPhone integrates better into a MS dominant environment than any past Windows Mobile device and I am not doubt this will change with WP 7 or 8.
  - Noneofyour
    
    “Many of those XP users are running legacy apps that do not run under
    Windows 7 and they are unlikely to run under Windows 8. And any legacy
    app that can be run in XP mode can be run using Parallels.”
    
    Please name some? It will be a short list.
  - Darwinphish
    
    Believe it or not, many companies still run intranet sites that require IE 6, old versions of database products like Foxpro and Access ’97, DOS based programs, accounting/finance packages and proprietary/custom software that will not run in Windows 7. If Win7 was 100% backwards compatible, MS would have included XP mode in Win7 Professional.
    
    Increasingly, there is less and less software that only runs under Windows. Why anyone would still develop client software that only run under Windows is beyond me. I will flip your question around: excluding games, what software do you use which runs only under Win 7 and for which there is no Mac alternative?
  - Just Iain
    
    Might the answer be for Microsoft to offer discounted prices for ‘Parallels’ and XP to be run either by Win8 or even on a Mac? Until Microsoft offers a bundled pair at a reasonable price, people will not move from XP if their old box is still running.
  - Darwinphish
    
    Believe it or not, many companies still run intranet sites that require IE 6, old versions of database products like Foxpro and Access ’97, DOS based programs, accounting/finance packages and proprietary/custom software that will not run in Windows 7. If Win7 was 100% backwards compatible, MS would have included XP mode in Win7 Professional.
    
    Increasingly, there is less and less software that only runs under Windows. Why anyone would still develop client software that only run under Windows is beyond me. I will flip your question around: excluding games, what software do you use which runs only under Win 7 and for which there is no Mac alternative?
  - http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
    
    Upgrading existing Windows users should not be considered success.
  - Anonymous
    
    The same thing was said about W7, that succeeded the Vista debacle. I was told by friends that it’s ‘almost’ as good as the Snow Leopard.
    
    Except for medium to big businesses that have to use Windows, more and more people are discovering that either OS X is a better option, or that they really don’t need a PC at all.
    
    I’ve just read in another blog that Wiltel tablets are going to cost $100+ more than the iPad. They may be just DOA.
    
    With the possibility of a poor showing of Windows Phones as well, Ballmer should be having a lot of sleepless nights.
- http://kaizenity.blogspot.com/ FalKirk
  
  “Soon slate devices and smartphones will have the ability to support external keyboards, large screens, external hard drives, enhanced operating systems, etc, further eroding the need for “conventional” pc’s ”-Pieter
  
  I think you’re slightly missing the mark, Pieter. Keyboards, large screens, external hard drives, etc. are all edge cases for smart phones and tablets. The key to the tablet (and a smart phone is just a small tablet) is not that it replaces the PC but that it does many tasks – perhaps most tasks – BETTER than the PC. The PC is not in danger of being replaced, it is in danger of being marginalized.
- Anonymous
  
  Ballmer’s sleeping aids:
  
  • developers, developers, developers
  • windows, windows, windows
  • office, office, office
Anonymous

What would be more insightful is separating what tasks are being done by people and what devices they are using. We are using more computing power than before but we are not isolating this power in a notebook or desktop anymore. There are now smartphones, tablets, smart Tv, consoles which are competing against the PC for use. Before the PC was the one stop shop that did everything but now with increasing miniturisation we can separate the tasks out to other devices which better suit the completion of the task. For reading books – most would prefer a tablet over a pc, for quick access to email – most would prefer a smartphone to a pc etc.
http://dberkholz.com Donnie Berkholz

I’d love to see BlackBerry added to the “mobile as PC substitute” graph. Wonder if it would turn the past 5-7 years into a mirror image of the early ’90s (albeit more extreme).
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  Stay tuned.
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  It’s been added in an update to the post.
  - http://dberkholz.com Donnie Berkholz
    
    Cool, thanks! Looks very roughly equivalent to iPhone, so I guess that on the market-share graph, it would produce another region of about the same thickness. Not a huge difference but a very real one.
Anurag

Thoughtful addition. However would have considered Nokia and RIM also as they are established competitor to Apple and Android. Would bet if we could split this chart into corporate versus personal/retail we can see the dominant platforms and especially the trend that most changes/disruptions are starting in retail/personal platform, as well in terms of dollar share (not the units) it is a fast growing market while enterprise might be at best a steady growth (mostly accounting for replacement sale). Tech cos cannot afford to ignore this trend.
MOD

I think this is valid. There are classes of (poor) people who’s only access to the internet is via their Android phone.

It is their only “computer”, and they don’t need anything else.

Likewise with the Ipad replacing laptops for travelers.
mysterio

Thanks for collecting and sharing this data. When I suggested the PC industry would provide useful context for the mobile discussion a few posts back, there was a lot of resistance. Seeing the trends in living color makes a huge difference. This is a once-in-a-generation shift in technology.

One point: ”WinTel” should be “Microsoft PC” or something to that effect, since it includes DOS. One of the amazing things from this chart is that the shift from text-based operating systems to the GUI is barely a blip in Microsoft’s ascendency in the late 80′s/early 90′s. This is a testament to how well Bill Gates saw and managed that fundamental shift in the computing paradigm. The WIMP GUI was just as disruptive as touch, so it’s incredible that one company was able to bridge both eras.

Could you share the numbers? Would also be great to see DOS vs. Windows…
- Anonymous
  
  “This is a testament to how well Bill Gates…” It’s not that hard when all you have to do is copy Apple….
  - Noneofyour
    
    Or IBM or….
http://twitter.com/bennomatic bennomatic

Great video. Little suggestion: if there’s a way you could extend the final frame for a few seconds to let the music trail off and let those final changes in status sink in, that’d be great. In the current revision, as soon as you hit the final frame, your video ends abruptly and Google immediately overlays it with links to other videos.
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Tora Harris

Assuming this data is correct, it looks like the traditional PC is in trouble. Smartphone/Tablet market may not at the moment do everything as a full desktop, but it almost certainly will. The iPad and iPhone with iOS5 de-tethers it from the traditional computer, so there is less and less reason to use one.

The other thing to look as are the kids, especially the toddler to pre-teens. They quickly adapt to the touch screen interface and don’t have the mouse and keyboard baggage us commenters posting on this blog have.

Their touch screen interaction in the form of parents handing them smart phones as pacifiers is getting ingrained into their minds when they are most absorbent to new things. This is combined with the fact that touch screen takes away a huge layer of abstraction and becomes so intuitive.

It is not likely that they will EVER come around to the mouse and keyboard paradigm. In their mind that is long gone like the typewriter for us. When they come of age to start buying computers, that is when the graph of the PC line shoots down. Then it vanishes when they get into the workplace and the new tools are written for the users of the new paradigm. It can already be seen with the touch screen interfaces at the registers in fast-food restaurants.

A company today must recognize this and already move towards this new reality or vanish as the development and uptake rate is longer than the decline of the incumbent products.
- Noneofyour
  
  “It is not likely that they will EVER come around to the mouse and
  keyboard paradigm. In their mind that is long gone like the typewriter
  for us.”
  
  I guess you don’t have kids.
  - Anonymous
    
    I gave my friend the basic Kindle as a gift. His six year old was wondering why it was not turning on when he was jabbing the screen with his finger!
- Z Kariv
  
  Or, further, use voice combined with an artificial inteligance (Siri’s type and beyond).
  And not far behind (10 years??) the ability to collect our brain’s waves and interperate (spelling) it correctly…
no

horace,

So did you take the 50,000 number for NeXT from wikipedia
and extrapolate it?

I was told that US Navy had purchased 50,000
machines but dropped the project once hardware
was discontinued and a large number were sitting in
warehouses. I learned to program it because
one of those was sitting unused in a contractors’ SCIF.
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  That data is sourced from the link in the post (Jeremy Reimer)
Al Toy

Really illuminates Jobs ability to sneak up on MS. The Trojan was the Ipod.
- http://twitter.com/kirkburgess kirkburgess
  
  In the Bio, it seems to have been every other senior manager at apple that pushed for iPod to be windows compatible – it was Jobs who hated the idea, but reluctantly agreed to do it anyway.
Blah

Does “Other” include SGI, DEC, and Sun? I would love to see those on a chart, maybe a history of workstations. They were a big part of my life.
http://ximagin.co/ The CW

If the Android platform backfills into traditional computing platforms (laptops and desktops) it would be a significant threat to PCs.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=741717344 Dick Applebaum
  
  That’s an interesting thought…
  
  I think that this is where Apple, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Microsoft — has a distinct advantage over Android.
  
  The advantage is the stable of OS X and Windows apps that could be ported to ARM mobile devices.
  
  I believe that Apple is several years ahead of MS because of the cross-pollination of OS X—>iOS—>OS X.
  
  Most of the major APIs for OS X desktop apps have been ported [and improved] to iOS.
  
  With proper planning, an app could be developed (or re-developed) so that it runs on both OS X and iOS.
  
  Android does not have a stable of desktop apps like Office, Photoshop, iMovie, Final Cut, etc… to port to tablets or Laptops.
  - Anonymous
    
    True. Also, the Chrome OS doesn’t have the same relation to Android as iOS has with OS X.
  - Anonymous
    
    Absolutely right. It really is fascinating to watch Apple progress year after year. In hindsight, you can see that everything follows a clear strategic plan, and all the actions are just putting the pieces in place for the next move.
    
    I guess it really boils down to this methodical operation: the competitors clearly see what Apple is doing, but they have disregarded most of the things in the past. Now they are at least 5 years behind in critical areas and are desperately trying to take any shortcut they can think of. Ironically, they are trying to replicate the success Apple has without understanding why Apple has succeeded in the first place.
  - Anonymous
    
    Fiftysixty, Nicely stated. The comments in this post are so interesting because they seem to underscore how much the path Apple is on is disguised by resistance to change. The fear level is rising and the strong objections reflect that. I am watching Apple disrupt an industry I spent 25 years in (IT – since 1986) and all I hear is people screaming that it is not happening! Isn’t Horace just wonderful! -Bert
  - http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
    
    The objections are the most useful part of the discussion. If there were no objections, I’d worry either that it’s over or that incumbents will embrace the changes.
  - Just Iain
    
    Dick, I think a native Apple version of Parallels that could run iOS on a desktop/laptop would be a big nail in anyone else’s business plan. Imagine the interest in the Apple Desktops and laptops if people could recycle their apps. All those companies busy creating internal Corporate iPad apps could have them run without additional software to write that was focused on the desktop only.
    
    Yousa!
Anonymous

Horace, in your last chart you left out the iPod Touch, which is also an iOS device.
Anonymous

I also think we need to have multiple charts for the high end, the medium end, and the low end computers. For example, in tablets, I would quantify the Amazon Kindle Reader as low end, the B&N Nook, Kindle Fire, and iPod Touch as medium end, and the iPad as high end. For PC, I’d quantify the netbooks as low end, IPads and lower end portables as medium end, and high end portables and desktops as high end.

Clearly, there are many shades of grey that spread between these major spectrums, but you get the idea.
Anonymous

Sensationalist headline. Personal computing has not fallen in fact it’s never been so personal with smartphones and tablets like the ipad which are configured for single use and not multiple users.
- Anonymous
  
  I’d say the headline is slightly off. It should say “The rise and fall of the traditional personal computer”. It’s a small difference, but an important one.
  - http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
    
    These new devices will never be called personal computers. They may be called phones or tablets or something new altogether but you can be sure they’ll never be PCs. PCs were originally more accurately named “microcomputers” but the PC moniker took off after the branding from IBM.
  - Anonymous
    
    I get it. But I think kankerot was thinking of “personal” computer, not “Personal Computer”.
  - Anonymous
    
    http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/16/apple-is-the-top-personal-computer-vendor/#comment-413872842
    
    But you like to call Apple a personal computer vendor and include ipads. Is it personal or Personal?
    
    Either way its sophistry and you should stick to one definition but you can’t as it means you cant write some new fluff about Apple by fudging the description.
    
    Why dont you include console sales, smart Tv, and any electronic gadget into the mix?
  - Richard Lamsdale
    
    I get your point but I think you’re being needlessly antagonistic – the great majority of people would define a computer as something on which you can check email, browse the web and produce documents (letters, spreadsheets, presentations). Other functions are peripheral to most people, so games console or smart TV or camera wouldn’t qualify. The lines between devices are becoming blurred but that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting conclusions to be drawn – they just need to be carefully framed and presented.
Mike

I’m not totally buying this. People go through cell phones at worst once every other year. A lot of people get phones more often than that. People replace desktops/laptops every 4-5 years. This does not necessarily mean that mobile is replacing the PC
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  If we look at penetration in terms of devices per capita, mobile (including non-smartphones) is far higher than traditional computers. My expectation is that several of these emergent platforms will be well over the 1 billion/yr mark in a few years.
- http://wmilliken.livejournal.com/ Walter Milliken
  
  I don’t think the typical corporate desktop replacement cycle is 4-5 years, though recently it has been longer than usual. I believe the typical historical value is more on the order of 3 years. Whether the longer recent PC cycle will persist is an open question, I think, though I do believe businesses are questioning the need for as-frequent upgrades as they’ve done in the past.
- Anonymous
  
  If you look at how much people spend on PCs per year versus “mobile computing” per year (devices + data plans) you’re likely to find out that PCs lose. If you look at how those figures have developed historically, you can see a trend. And no, I don’t have the data to prove that, but rough calculations clearly point to that (Finnish prices):
  
  iPhone unlocked ~600€ + data plan 10€ per month for 24 months = 840€.
  Yearly that makes 420€.
  
  If the PC replacement cycle is 4 years, then the ASP would have to be 1680€ to match the iPhone. Clearly it’s not, not even for Apple.
  
  You could argue that the smartphone ASP is way lower, and I’d agree. But according to Tomi Ahonen, the average smartphone replacement cycle is now 11.5 months. Using that figure we’d get a yearly spending of about 720€ for the iPhone. Even if you disregard the data plan and concentrate solely on the hardware, PCs still lose.
  
  Money speaks, and as Horace posits, the PC era is in decline.
Doji

what input can you share with us in terms of any response from apple for low end price disruption to compete with android in mobile computing(tablets, smartphones).
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  I have no input from Apple except what Tim Cook says in every conference call. The following are quotes from meetings with analysts:
  • Prepaid market? “Anyone who tries to sell a full-functioning pre-paid phone deals with the same issues as we do. In all of our markets, we know there are large groups of people who are not served.” • Pricing? “We are selling the 3GS in many markets, it’s free in many markets; it’s $49 in the US. We are very happy. We are very happy with the number of iPhone sales. Growing 2x.” • How do you look at the emerging markets? “We have very high share in our subsidized market. When you look at the unsubsidized markets, what the users see is the price of the phone. In some countries, customers are very sensitive to that; would like to boil down to price only, which is wrong.”
- Anonymous
  
  There’s always the iPod Touch and Skype or Tango….
Mike

Perhaps we should start referring to smartphones as “handheld computers” to go alongside “tablet computers, “laptop computers,” and “desktop computers.”
- Anonymous
  
  I’ve always liked the term “pocket computer” myself.
  - Anonymous
    
    Yeah…
    
    Is that pc a PC?
  - Anonymous
    
    Or – is that a PC in your pocket or are you just happy to see me….
  - Just Iain
    
    Actually I think it should be “Is that an Android phone or are you still reading paperbacks”
  - Kizedek
    
    Oooh, I think oversized smartphone screens just got slated.
John Morgan

There’s something very satisfying in seeing my lifetime of computer interaction represented so compactly.

Small thing that bothered me when looking for patterns – in the market share plots, new entrants are being introduced at the bottom of the chart, except for phones and tablets, which are introduced at the top. In order to see the historical pattern they should continue to be introduced at the bottom. Also, iPod Touch.
- Kizedek
  
  I think it helps being the way it is: the symmetry gives a domed curve to the central PC share, so that you can see it rising and falling.
Darwinphish

Horace,

First off, this is excellent work. Some may still argue that the iPad et al are not PC’s, but they are personal computing devices and its great to see them all in one set of graphs.

Did you considered including pre-smartphone handheld computer sales (e.g. Palm, Windows CE and Psion/early Symbian)? If you are interested, I have estimated total yearly numbers from 1994-2005.
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  Yes, I am interested, please send to horace.dediu at asymco.com
- Anonymous
  
  Jeez. I guess you’d have to include the Newton then….
- Richard Lamsdale
  
  This is my reaction as well – iOS and Android haven’t only taken share from the PC – a great deal of their gain has come at the expense of Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm and RIM. If they were included (which is debatable – I am struggling to see a Symbian phone as a replacement for a computer, but that is also partly true of iOS and Android) then I believe the drop-off in PC share would look much less severe.
  - Sander van der Wal
    
    The Nokia Communicator and the SonyEricsson P900 were very close to being laptop replacements for people who only needs were some light web browsing and emailing.
    
    The old Psion Series 5 and netBook were laptop replacements, especially the netBook. Best traveling computers I had, before the iPad.
  - Richard Lamsdale
    
    Good point – I was thinking more about the Symbian phones such as the N95 – great phone in it’s day, OK for email, pretty bad for most other PC functions.
  - Darwinphish
    
    The issues is not just whether one type of device directly replaces another type (i.e. buying an Palm Pilot instead of a laptop), but also to show how new devices can restrict the growth of incumbent devices. Many buyers of handhelds, smartphones and tablets may have never purchased a traditional PC.
  - Darwinphish
    
    The issues is not just whether one type of device directly replaces another type (i.e. buying an Palm Pilot instead of a laptop), but also to show how new devices can restrict the growth of incumbent devices. Many buyers of handhelds, smartphones and tablets may have never purchased a traditional PC.
Anonymous

You can see this anecdotally as well. I know a couple that in 2009 had 2 BlackBerry phones and shared a Windows XP PC, but today they have 2 iPhones, an iPad, an AppleTV, and they hardly use the Windows PC anymore. All of the Apple devices get more use than the Windows PC. And they are debating whether the Windows PC gets replaced with a MacBook Pro or an iMac. No Windows PC is even being evaluated. These are the furthest thing from Apple fanboys that you can imagine. Not computer people at all. It started when the bought an iPad to take with them.
- BrBill
  
  Similar deal for me. Longtime PC guy here, with some Mac experience, built dozens, been developing on PC for years. At home we are now all Mac, but I still run Windows on VMWare Fusion. When I need it. Which is something like 2 nonconsecutive weeks a year, when I’m doing Windows development.
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http://wmilliken.livejournal.com/ Walter Milliken

I think one of the big drivers in this disruption will be the third world, where low-powered mobile computing may be the first viable access to computing power for many people. This has already happened in the telecom industry, where many nations have ignored landline deployments in favor of cell towers. I believe similar infrastructure and economic considerations should strongly favor early adoption of mobile computing platforms over traditional PCs in these markets, once sufficiently-capable platforms are both sufficiently easy to use without significant training, and drop in price enough to be affordable (which may indeed be happening already).
Rob Scott

The last graph reminded me of the Roadkill Memo:

“Our feat, and believe me I do not mean to belittle it, has been to ride this wave of technology and maintain or increase our relative position. The correct way to measure this position, and thus our market share, is as a fraction of worldwide CPU cycles consumed by our products. (As an aside, the evolution of the information highway will cause this market share metric to evolve as well. Rather than measuring the fraction of the worlds computing cycles executed by our software, we will have to look at share of both CPU cycles as well as total data transmitted.)
Maintaining CPU cycle share is very hard to do, because the right mix of products and technology to do this at various points in time changes a lot. Companies that have point products or which only extrapolate linearly will fail. So far, we have often been the beneficiary because we have been able to reinvent the company at each point along the line.
The bad news about this is that we will have to continue to do so, and at a rate which continues to increase. It will impossible for us to maintain our historical growth curves unless we maintain our CPU cycle share and that means that we must do two things: continue to bring new technology to our existing products, and at the same time create new product lines to track the emergence of computing in new mass markets.
One aspect of the price/performance trend discussed above is that a PC class machine will get amazingly powerful, but an equal consequence is that extremely cheap consumer computing devices will emerge with the same or higher computing power than today’s PCs, but with far higher volume. The bulk of the worlds’ computing cycles come near the low end, high volume part of the market. Any software company that wants to maintain its relative share of total CPU cycles must have products that are relevant to the high volume segment of the market. If you don’t, then you are vulnerable to a software company that does establishes a position there and then rides the technology curve up to the mainstream. This is what the PC industry did to mainframes and minicomputers, and if we in the PC industry are not careful this fate will befall us as well.”
Rob Scott

The last graph reminded me of the Roadkill Memo:

“Our feat, and believe me I do not mean to belittle it, has been to ride this wave of technology and maintain or increase our relative position. The correct way to measure this position, and thus our market share, is as a fraction of worldwide CPU cycles consumed by our products. (As an aside, the evolution of the information highway will cause this market share metric to evolve as well. Rather than measuring the fraction of the worlds computing cycles executed by our software, we will have to look at share of both CPU cycles as well as total data transmitted.)
Maintaining CPU cycle share is very hard to do, because the right mix of products and technology to do this at various points in time changes a lot. Companies that have point products or which only extrapolate linearly will fail. So far, we have often been the beneficiary because we have been able to reinvent the company at each point along the line.
The bad news about this is that we will have to continue to do so, and at a rate which continues to increase. It will impossible for us to maintain our historical growth curves unless we maintain our CPU cycle share and that means that we must do two things: continue to bring new technology to our existing products, and at the same time create new product lines to track the emergence of computing in new mass markets.
One aspect of the price/performance trend discussed above is that a PC class machine will get amazingly powerful, but an equal consequence is that extremely cheap consumer computing devices will emerge with the same or higher computing power than today’s PCs, but with far higher volume. The bulk of the worlds’ computing cycles come near the low end, high volume part of the market. Any software company that wants to maintain its relative share of total CPU cycles must have products that are relevant to the high volume segment of the market. If you don’t, then you are vulnerable to a software company that does establishes a position there and then rides the technology curve up to the mainstream. This is what the PC industry did to mainframes and minicomputers, and if we in the PC industry are not careful this fate will befall us as well.”
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http://twitter.com/kirkburgess kirkburgess

“Given time, I think Apple will address the lower price points but they will do it with an integrated offering of service and product.”
That’s an interesting prediction Horace. When you say “Service” are you referring to apple offering a content subscription of some kind in exchange for subsidized hardware – or apple selling a wireless subscription (or reselling someone else’s service)?
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  Think of the way they bundled the iPad with a SIM card. The service had to be pay as you go and no strings attached.
  - Anonymous
    
    So Apple does not have to offer a wireless service cheaper/more flexible than what is currently available – it “encourages” other third parties to do it for them.
    
    Are you inferring that rather than try and compete with lower prices in the Prepaid handset market, Apple may try to get those customers to instead spend more upfront on a more expensive device, and in return get an “Exclusive apple-device-only” discounted prepaid wireless service from their carrier?
peter parker

Do you
have anything against refurbished computers? I have saved a lot from buying
refurbished items and the products I get have always been good quality and
last longer than some things I have bought new. I have a Dell Optiplex GX520
that I bought refurbished for about $119 once during a holiday deal about two
years ago from ‘ElectroComputerWarehouse’. It still works great and it serves
its purpose. It’s great for surfing the net, watching DVDs and other tasks.
You may check for you as well http://www.electrocomputerwarehouse.com
http://twitter.com/osma Osma Ahvenlampi

Would like to see this charted as not units shipped per year, but as active deployed base, counting in the replacement cycle (2-4 years, probably). Is the data available?
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http://twitter.com/multiplex multiplex

You might want to take into account that a single old-skool PC is the equivalent of 2-4 new-skool devices due to the shorter upgrade cycle and lower cost (capex and in term of end-user pain). That would put things more in perspective.
http://twitter.com/multiplex multiplex

You might want to take into account that a single old-skool PC is the equivalent of 2-4 new-skool devices due to the shorter upgrade cycle and lower cost (capex and in term of end-user pain). That would put things more in perspective.
http://twitter.com/TezelYigit Yigit Tezel

Don’t you find it a bit odd that you can not do any of this research&analysis with an Ipad but yet you define it in the same category?
- Anonymous
  
  Why wouldn’t you be able to do any of it on an iPad?
  - drew_reece
    
    Lack of opposable thumbs?
  - drew_reece
    
    Lack of opposable thumbs?
- Studentrights
  
  Really? You apparently haven’t tried.
- Anonymous
  
  What do you mean by “research&analysis”? Are you saying you can’t input a table of numbers and produce a chart? If that’s your definition of personal computing, then apply it to each and every device in the chart and see what you are left with. Did the TRS-80 have spreadsheet software? I dunno.
  - Michael
    
    ChKen, yes, the TRS-80 had VisiCalc and Multiplan.
  - Now I feel old…
    
    Multiplan (later known as Excel) shipped first on the Mac in 1984, well after the TRS-80 had gone into decline. VisiCalc ran on TRS-DOS on the Model III and CoCo. Those of us who had TRS-80 Model Is did not have access to a spreadsheet.
    
    My favorite boot sequence ever:
    MEMSIZE?
    R/S L2 Basic>
  - http://twitter.com/TezelYigit Yigit Tezel
    
    Don’t think only as Softwares. An other issue is about the ergonomi ( use of a mouse, screen size )
- http://twitter.com/leicaman leicaman
  
  First post is someone who has no experience with a technology under discussion. Hilarious.
  
  I know a man who runs a college and does all his work on an iPad. And they are very progressive and quite successful.
- http://twitter.com/leicaman leicaman
  
  First post is someone who has no experience with a technology under discussion. Hilarious.
  
  I know a man who runs a college and does all his work on an iPad. And they are very progressive and quite successful.
- http://twitter.com/leicaman leicaman
  
  First post is someone who has no experience with a technology under discussion. Hilarious.
  
  I know a man who runs a college and does all his work on an iPad. And they are very progressive and quite successful.
- http://teapartynews.us David H Dennis
  
  The chart looks like it was created with Numbers. Pages, Keynote and Numbers are all available for iPad and work great.
  
  An external keyboard (which I have now) works wonders with iPad for doing serious work. It’s probably still easier to use a Macintosh, and that’s most likely what he uses, because you can have multiple windows open and copy between them more easily.
  
  I’ve seen about three or four articles from people who have dumped their computers for iPads, so to say it’s not a threat to traditional computing is to stick your head in the sand.
  
  However, I will admit that I own iMac, iPad and iPhone, and use all three every day. It is probable that for most people with substantial computing needs, the devices supplement each other instead of replacing each other. This probably describes you, me and most people interested in the subject matter here.
  
  Don’t forget people with lesser resources and fewer needs, however. My business partner’s son is using an iPhone as his sole computing device – much better than having none at all. And people in the third world are doing the same thing – their cheap Android phones, which are bought as phones, are often used as their primary access to the web as well. Before then, they had to go to expensive (for them) pay per use Internet cafes, so the small device is actually a big step up.
  
  So globally, Asymco’s third graph is highly realistic. What’s not shown is that the much lower cost of entry has enormously expanded the market and is serving people who have had to do without before. That’s a great achievement for phone designers, and Apple has led the way in making it possible, by creating the basic design then copied by cheapo Android vendors who snap up most of the sales in poor countries.
  
  D
  
  (This post was written on my iMac, but could have certainly been written on my iPad with external keyboard and it would have been written just as well. It just happened that I saw this page when browsing the web on my computer.)
- http://teapartynews.us David H Dennis
  
  The chart looks like it was created with Numbers. Pages, Keynote and Numbers are all available for iPad and work great.
  
  An external keyboard (which I have now) works wonders with iPad for doing serious work. It’s probably still easier to use a Macintosh, and that’s most likely what he uses, because you can have multiple windows open and copy between them more easily.
  
  I’ve seen about three or four articles from people who have dumped their computers for iPads, so to say it’s not a threat to traditional computing is to stick your head in the sand.
  
  However, I will admit that I own iMac, iPad and iPhone, and use all three every day. It is probable that for most people with substantial computing needs, the devices supplement each other instead of replacing each other. This probably describes you, me and most people interested in the subject matter here.
  
  Don’t forget people with lesser resources and fewer needs, however. My business partner’s son is using an iPhone as his sole computing device – much better than having none at all. And people in the third world are doing the same thing – their cheap Android phones, which are bought as phones, are often used as their primary access to the web as well. Before then, they had to go to expensive (for them) pay per use Internet cafes, so the small device is actually a big step up.
  
  So globally, Asymco’s third graph is highly realistic. What’s not shown is that the much lower cost of entry has enormously expanded the market and is serving people who have had to do without before. That’s a great achievement for phone designers, and Apple has led the way in making it possible, by creating the basic design then copied by cheapo Android vendors who snap up most of the sales in poor countries.
  
  D
  
  (This post was written on my iMac, but could have certainly been written on my iPad with external keyboard and it would have been written just as well. It just happened that I saw this page when browsing the web on my computer.)
  - http://twitter.com/TezelYigit Yigit Tezel
    
    Well, It is obvious that there are things that you can do even better that PC.
    
    What I really try to say it is a bit early for a compare. Probably in 10 years the only place to see a desktop computers will be museums.
    
    Also with the NFC there will be times we will discuss creadit cards sales with mobile phones sales.
    
    I might sound like a j**k but I really didn’t mean it.
- Mau S
  
  You are trying to be a jerk but you managed to look stupid.
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  It’s not just odd, it’s amazing.
- jason gray
  
  It isn’t related to being able to do work on competing devices. The fight is over the choice made to upgrade one piece of technology or another. If the PC you own is pretty much good enough to do those bits of research&analysis work – and let’s face it, any PC bought since the C2D days running Windows7 is more than good enough for 90% of work requirements – your motivation is much higher to upgrade to a mobile device which supplements those things, and has a more vibrant developer ecosystem. So the time between upgrades on PC’s becomes more protracted, and this gray mass of sundry mobile devices is at the moment far more compelling for a growing number of people.
- http://www.asymco.com Horace Dediu
  
  What makes you think I can’t? All the tools I use are available on the iPad.
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Candidcamel

I predict the death of all devices…having owned a dozen pcs since 1991 when I needed to get up to speed for a Fed Job…I got hooked…coming from an educational background…as the years have flown by, I am now down to a laptop and find I use it less and less. Most of the folks I communicate with could get by with a gaming & email device as they use their PCs and laptops for gaming only; however, I am done with gaming…The Thrill Is Gone…wish I had my original PC back to be more creative…but the need is gone…The RAPID increase of no-real brains needed to negotiate and manipulate graphics, pictures, text, the death of jobs related to so many technological advances and the reality of a need for too much info in 2 secs (iphone 4G—OMGG): with the dying of the camera and more…The Computer and related products have re-ignited my original thought…”you may just be the Anti-Christ!”
Forgive my stream of consciousness ramblings…but it is an AHDH Social Society…and LOL…Social Websites are actually Anti-Social Websites!
Candidcamel

I predict the death of all devices…having owned a dozen pcs since 1991 when I needed to get up to speed for a Fed Job…I got hooked…coming from an educational background…as the years have flown by, I am now down to a laptop and find I use it less and less. Most of the folks I communicate with could get by with a gaming & email device as they use their PCs and laptops for gaming only; however, I am done with gaming…The Thrill Is Gone…wish I had my original PC back to be more creative…but the need is gone…The RAPID increase of no-real brains needed to negotiate and manipulate graphics, pictures, text, the death of jobs related to so many technological advances and the reality of a need for too much info in 2 secs (iphone 4G—OMGG): with the dying of the camera and more…The Computer and related products have re-ignited my original thought…”you may just be the Anti-Christ!”
Forgive my stream of consciousness ramblings…but it is an AHDH Social Society…and LOL…Social Websites are actually Anti-Social Websites!
Bill

The picture that shows the iPad as the first device to disrupt the impression of PC dominance does not include the other small computing devices that were available in the late 1990′s. The Palm device, the Pocket PC (running MS WinCE) and yes, the Newton, are not shown. If you’re going to include IOS devices and Android, you must include the others.

Terrific post, nevertheless!
- http://netcropolis.org W. Ian Blanton
  
  Agreed. What’s interesting is that on these charts, the 90′s look like a dead period for new devices; even though as you point out, there were a number of devices that should be counted.
- http://netcropolis.org W. Ian Blanton
  
  Agreed. What’s interesting is that on these charts, the 90′s look like a dead period for new devices; even though as you point out, there were a number of devices that should be counted.
  - Anonymous
    
    I don’t think any of those count.
    
    PocketPC devices were a footnote*, the Newton as well, and none of the Palms in the 90s did any better in terms of being “personal computing” – no network access**, and they were in essence just an adjunct to your real computer.
    
    There’s a reason they were “portable digital assistants”.
    
    (* I owned two of them. And I have a Newton, too. And had a Palm III. So I was there, had the stuff, remember using it.
    
    And they are irrelevant in this context, though they were useful foreshadowing of the modern handheld computer/phone/tablet. But they can’t replace a PC like one of those can, for general computer-use tasks.
    
    **Palms did eventually get that, but in the 2000s, and by being Palm-branded Windows Mobile devices. Which still sucked, because WMP7 is the first version of Windows Mobile that hasn’t completely sucked.)
  - Bill
    
    I couldn’t disagree more, and I find myself wondering what in the world you were doing wasting money on these devices, since you failed to utilize any of them to their full potential. For example, the 1999 Casio pocket PC had a spectacular (for its time) color screen and had a WiFi card that you inserted in the top of the unit, and it had a very capable web browser. Also, it could play full-length movies, as well as music and ebooks and audio books, as well as program applications. It had everything that the iPod had, eight years earlier.
    
    Also, there were smart phones before the (admittedly superior) iPhone; I had a Palm Treo for years. My only question has to do with sales figures, which I reiterate belong in the above graphs.
Bill

The picture that shows the iPad as the first device to disrupt the impression of PC dominance does not include the other small computing devices that were available in the late 1990′s. The Palm device, the Pocket PC (running MS WinCE) and yes, the Newton, are not shown. If you’re going to include IOS devices and Android, you must include the others.

Terrific post, nevertheless!
KAJoneslaw

I wonder if it would be illuminating to add another data set to your graph, almost another axis. Understanding the 100% is always the whole market, but obviously over time, that market has expanded. So the percentage of computing devices shipped in 2010 that are Windows is a significantly larger number of actual devices than Windows’s larger percentage of computing devices shipped say in 2002.
The way to show that on the graph would be for your last graph itself to be superimposed on a graph of the total number of computing devices shipped over time (PC + iPad + iPhone + Android). I do not have the skill to make that graph, but I my intuition tells me that it would be interesting to the discussion.
KAJoneslaw

I wonder if it would be illuminating to add another data set to your graph, almost another axis. Understanding the 100% is always the whole market, but obviously over time, that market has expanded. So the percentage of computing devices shipped in 2010 that are Windows is a significantly larger number of actual devices than Windows’s larger percentage of computing devices shipped say in 2002.
The way to show that on the graph would be for your last graph itself to be superimposed on a graph of the total number of computing devices shipped over time (PC + iPad + iPhone + Android). I do not have the skill to make that graph, but I my intuition tells me that it would be interesting to the discussion.

asymco

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[Updated] The rise and fall of personal computing

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