On 27th January 2010, one of the tech experts Steve Jobs stepped onto a San Francisco stage to unveil the iPad. Months after, CNN money came up with a write up with the headline ‘The end of the desktop PC (seriously)’. All these looked like a means to the extinction and death of the personal computer by the year 2020.
According to us-reviews.com, the gradual extinction of PC for a decade was noticed to boil down to the launch of windows 8 which was regarded as a flop thereby slowing down the market for PC- report by IDC.
There were other speculations that the decline in the demand for PCs could be due to the imminent debut of Windows 10, in which businesses may have opted to wait to upgrade their PCs. All these speculations led to the decline in the shipment of PC year over year thereby affecting its evolution for that decade.
In 2017, it was conceded that the PC industry is still selling more than a quarter billion every year. This was conceded to the fact that the industry might just have adapted and those competing platforms weren’t able to take over every PC-centric task and it was confirmed from the amount of sales derived from PC games stores.
So, how did PC tech evolve these past 10 years despite rumours of its extinction and death?
Some powerful mobile devices emanated which began doing tasks that PCs could do. This led to a reduction in consumer’s demand for PCs. Meanwhile, PC makers also noted some groups of consumers that were still willing to invest into PCs, which are business buyers and gamers. In view of this, they decided to invest heavily in these groups of people.
How did they achieve this?
Improvements on the Hardware
- They produced PCs that became thinner and lighter- A typical example is the Apple’s MacBook Air. Today, most high-end windows PCs produce PCs of such spec.
- PCs that are Touchscreens and 2-in-1s were in vogue- in 2010, Microsoft was showcasing its touchscreen PC which was overshadowed by IPad launch. But today, touchscreens are now existent on windows PCs
- Battery life is better with PCs being produced- in 2010, battery life of 5-6hours were considered good but doesn’t give a real world performance. Today, modern PCs get double the battery life of their ancestors from a decade ago.
- Ports have evolved
Improvements on the Software and services
A decade ago, most software available couldn’t produce average internet speeds fast enough to make a fully cloud-driven experiences practical.
Wireless connectivity was introduced through the use of Wi-Fi, thereby improving the internet speed.
So also, there is transformation of operating system upgrades, which used to be expensive but are now free.