When Buying a New Device, Think Applications Not Hardware

Someone recently suggested to me that smartphones volition replace PCs in two years. It'southward true that demand for PCs has declined over the terminal decade, from 365 million shipped in 2022 to 262 million last year, according to Statista.

Opinions At the same time, demand for smartphones has grown exponentially, while tablets put a small-scale dent in PC sales.

And so information technology would exist piece of cake to say we are in a post-PC era. But that assessment is too simplistic. In that location are and then many other dynamics at play, including more mobile piece of work styles, age demographics, and dozens of new form factors that blur the line of what personal computing means.

Total unit shipments of personal computers (PCs) worldwide from 2006 to 2022 (in million units)

Given those dynamics, Creative Strategies has been researching why people buy detail devices and in that location are two consequent threads amidst near buyers of laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Applications are at the center of their buying decisions, just it turns out the other fundamental factor is size. And in most cases, this means display and form gene. But ane size does not fit all, so many of usa end up with at least two personal calculating devices. In most cases, that means laptops and smartphones, but some tin can get abroad with but using a tablet and smartphone. Very few got by with merely a smartphone.

All the same, there a few form cistron changes on the horizon that could challenge our idea what we consider a laptop, tablet or smartphone. As I wrote in June, flexible display prototypes blur the line between smartphone and tablet. When a 5.5-inch smartphone unfolds into a 9.iii-inch tablet, is it now a smartphone or a tablet?

There are also dual-screen tablets and laptops. 1 tablet design I saw had two ix.seven-inch screens for about 19 inches of screen existent estate. Another had two 12-inch screens. In both cases, there is a seam in the middle so content is not continuous across both screens; one task displays on the left, another on the right.

This means that ultimately the type of mobile device one chooses to use volition be based on the types of applications they use. I've long told people not to exist dazzled by hardware when it comes to choosing which mobile device to purchase. Keep it simple, and think virtually how you'll really be using it.

Nearly Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin

Tim Bajarin is recognized equally one of the leading industry consultants, analysts, and futurists covering the field of personal computers and consumer technology. Mr. Bajarin has been with Creative Strategies since 1981 and has provided inquiry to nigh of the leading hardware and software vendors in the industry including IBM, Apple tree, Xerox, Compaq, Dell, AT&T, Microsoft, Polaroid, Lotus, Epson, Toshiba, and numerous others. Mr. Bajarin is known as a concise, futuristic analyst, credited with predicting the desktop publishing revolution three years before it hit the marketplace, and identifying multimedia every bit a major tendency in written reports equally early on equally 1984. He has authored major industry studies on PC, portable calculating, …