Will Smartphones and Tablets Kill the PC?

On the other hand, the PC and even a laptop aren't as portable as a tablet or smartphone. The first netbooks tried to make a laptop much more portable but ended up just being a smaller representation of a laptop with a smaller screen and keyboard which just frustrated customers. Smartphones are highly portable and most models today are optimized for Web browsing. They are also becoming more powerful. At CES, we saw the first dual core smartphones that will make these devices great for watching movies and playing HD games. NVIDIA calls these dual core smartphones "super phones."

Interestingly, one of the reasons why the question of whether or not PCs are dead is being bandied about is the fact that smartphones and tablets with dual core processors are starting to become as powerful as some PCs. But even if they get this type of PC power, the practical aspect of usability would keep these smaller mobile devices from ever taking over the heavy lifting role that the PC will have for years to come. In fact, even if the PC form factor is reduced to a smart client, as some have suggested, the overall design of the device with large screen and full keyboard will continue to make these types of products the work horses of our digital lives.

What the smartphones and tablets are good at then is content consumption. They 're optimal for use in what I call the "lean back" mode, where you may be sitting in an easy chair or in bed, using them to watch movies, TV shows, and browse the Web in this more laid back style of content access. Sure, you can do some content creation, like tweets, Facebook posts, and perhaps even longer form letters if you become skilled at typing on tiny screens. A lot of this type of content consumption is really optimized for what some call data snacking. Even if you can read a book on these smaller screens, your task is focused on absorbing the content, not creating it on these smaller devices. It would be pretty hard to actually write that book on even the best smartphone out there.

What it all comes down to is usability cases. The bigger fact is that we will actually have many digital screens in our lives. They could be on a refrigerator, tied to our food needs, or in our cars, tied to navigation and traffic congestion warnings, as well as on PCs, laptops, TVs, tablets, smartphones, or even in our bathrooms. We will have these screens at our disposal for just about any data, entertainment, or communications need we might have. It's how we use them that determine their real value to us at any given time.

Although PCs and laptops don't seem to be sexy any more in light of smartphone and tablet mania, they will remain the workhorse that meets our needs when content creation is our main task. The tablet, smartphone, and other screens that meet our purpose driven tasks will also become important products in our digital life, but will most likely be used for data consumption. So, while PCs may have lost their position as the darling of the computer world, it's my belief that they will continue to be quite important to a lot of people. As Mark Twain once said, and I paraphrase his quote, "The news of the PC's death is premature."



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