The market researcher Gartner agrees with the idea prophesized by Steve Jobs in yesterday’s launch of the Apple iPad 2 when he claimed that this was the advent of the post-PC era which has now arrived and where the specifications of a device take a back seat over the richness of user experience provided by it. When he made these carefully weighed musings about the new era in personal computing, no doubt, Jobs was trying to instill doubt in the minds of people who went out to buy a second PC so that they think twice before buying it.
According to Gartner, this is as good as a self-fulfilling prophecy from Apple. The research firm made some assessments about the future of personal computing yesterday. And if they are to be believed, the PC is headed towards a decline. Intel likes to describe the utility of tablet computers by the word “additive”, however, Gartner believes that the more appropriate adjective here will be “subtractive” as instead of buying a second PC and then considering a tablet to complement it, users are more likely to do away with the second PC altogether and just go for the tablet and do away with the second PC.
As a result of these deductions and the presumption that the consumer will now hold on to buying another PC but go for mobile computing devices such as tablets and smartphones in its place, Gartner has lowered its forecasted sale of PC units for 2011 and 2012. Apart from the tablets, there were also some other reasons for the company to play down PC sales, China being one of them. A weakness in China’s mobile consumer computer market is being expected in the near future which will also factor in for the decrease in expected PC sales.
