IDC Sees Wintel On The Edge Of A Precipice at Robert Pogson

“Complacency and a lack of innovation among OEM vendors and other parts of the PC ecosystem has occurred over the past five years. As a result, PC market growth flattened in 2012 and may stagnate in 2013 as users continue gravitating to ever more powerful smartphones and tablets.

This year, over 2 billion users will access the Internet. What makes this compelling is not the number of users going online, but rather the number of devices that will be used to gain access. Over half of these users will access the Internet with mobile devices, which means that system OEMs and semiconductor suppliers need to emphasize technology that offers better performance, optimizes power for all day mobility, and drives integration and cost savings by leveraging heterogeneous SoC-based solutions across every form factor.

see IDC Announces Study Highlighting New Roadmap on the Future of Personal Computing.

There are still those that see the Wintel PC as the anchor of IT but it is really a millstone around the neck of IT. Instead of letting Wintel drag everyone down, OEMs, software developers, retailers and consumers are turning to Free Software and open systems to get done what they want. A large monitor and a keyboard are not the sole property of Wintel PCs. Consumers now have Android/Linux, GNU/Linux and other offerings besides the legacy stuff from Apple, M$ and its “partners”.

Five years ago, I would see 47 varieties of Wintel PCs on retail shelves. This year I see 5 varieties of Wintel and 47 varieties of other personal computing devices, largely tablets and smartphones but more GNU/Linux desktops and notebooks are being produced and sold every year. Real competition has entered the market for consumers’ money and legacy Wintel has lost traction and mind-share. Business usage of Wintel PCs seem to be the last hold-out but even business is using smart thingies as accessories to Wintel PCs and thin clients to access Wintel applications. M$’s grip on IT is broken. We expect to see that in the numbers this week as a new release, Christmas and huge outlays on advertising have not advanced M$’s cause much at all.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.