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posted by on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the vive-le-roi dept.

You may never buy another laptop.

Ten years ago, laptop sales overtook desktop PC sales to become the dominant hardware platform for computing. Now smartphones are about to do to laptops what laptops did to desktops.

[...] The first fatal trend is that young people are already choosing smartphones over laptops, even without docking and clamshell smartphones. ComScore reports that the use of laptops and desktops among younger people is on the decline. Some 20 percent of millennials use their smartphone as their only computing device, according to a recent report, and this percentage grows each year. Raw demographics alone favor the end of laptops.

The second fatal trend is that the industry is champing at the bit to move everything off Intel and onto ARM. (Intel and Intel-compatible chips have powered desktop and laptop platforms for decades; the smartphones and smartphone apps run on ARM chips.) Once laptops, especially laptops from Apple, run ARM chips, they'll run iOS and Android instead of OS X and Windows. And at that point, they'll essentially be identical to docking solutions, but more expensive.

The third and final fatal trend can be found in your wallet. Smartphones are becoming amazing. The Galaxy S8 is amazing. And this year's iPhone is expected to be mind-blowing as well. The new phones have cameras that rival DSLRs. They have performance that rivals desktop PCs. They run increasingly amazing apps, including professional-quality apps. Unlike laptops, smartphones are exciting.

And they're expensive.

Consumers are now ready to pay $700, $800 — even $1,000 and upwards for a phone. (Already a top-of-the-line iPhone 7 with AppleCare costs $1,100. The iPhone 8 is expected to be more expensive.)

Consumers will pay this amount because smartphones are worth it. This is especially true if they don't have to shell out $1,500 or more for a laptop as well.

Laptops are too boring and expensive. The industry is churning out new designs that enable smartphones as laptop replacements. Young people are favoring smartphones. The industry wants to use smartphone OSes. And consumers are spending more on smartphones, which will make us spend less on laptops.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday April 06 2017, @12:38AM (5 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday April 06 2017, @12:38AM (#489430) Journal

    TFA is dated April 1st. Are we sure it isn't a joke? I mean, some of the arguments are truly preposterous. It's obvious that most of the audience here knows why already, so -- even if TFA is meant to be serious -- I won't even bother debunking this clickbait point by point.

    One thing that is true is laptop usage has gone down in recent years and will likely continue to decrease, in favor of tablets/smartphones/etc. But it's a matter of task and application. 10-15 years ago, if you wanted a functional computer to browse the web, check email, etc. AND which you could also carry around the house, a laptop was probably your best bet. Yes, tablets or convertible notebooks existed, but they were often expensive or a niche product with limited power.

    That's all changed today, so for people who want an easy device to do common HOME tasks like browse the web, email, social media, etc., a tablet or even a smartphone is generally convenient.

    But that doesn't mean smartphones are appropriate for any task! Most of the "serious" work I do requires me to access multiple applications at the same time. Having 2 or 3 (or sometimes more) windows visible at the same time is convenient a lot of the time and essential to some work tasks. Most mobile OSes are predicated around the "one app at a time, fullscreen" model, which is absolutely useless for serious work, even if I plugged a keyboard and a mouse into a phone or whatever.

    Maybe laptops are destined to go back to what they were in the 1990s -- a convenient mobile product for business users who need portability and flexibility. Except now those users can get a decent product for an order of magnitude less money. I have no doubt the markets will continue to shrink a bit, but I don't see ALL business users using a docked smartphone to do serious tasks anytime soon.

    It's ironic that this story popped up here today of all days, just after Mark Shuttleworth announced [ubuntu.com] that Ubuntu is finally abandoning Unity, effectively saying it was a failed experiment and that he believed that "convergence" of mobile and desktop OSes wasn't going to happen. So, who am I to believe? Some random dude on Computerworld who apparently doesn't realize you can buy a functional laptop for much less than an iPhone, or a guy who set his entire business model on mobile/desktop "convergence" for the past six years or so (holding fast to that prediction, despite huge amounts of criticism) and now realized it simply isn't working out in the real world?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by goody on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:11AM (3 children)

    by goody (2135) on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:11AM (#489440)

    I don't think this is an April Fool's joke. The author is Mike Elgan. I encountered him over on G+ several years ago and after reading a few of his writings repeatedly face-palmed myself. I'm tempted to say he's as dumb as a bag of rocks, but that might be unfair.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:20AM (1 child)

      by Arik (4543) on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:20AM (#489446) Journal
      "I'm tempted to say he's as dumb as a bag of rocks, but that might be unfair."

      To the rocks, right?

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @09:54AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @09:54AM (#489597)

        No, to the bag.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:43PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @06:43PM (#489788)

      why are people like this successful?

      We do we allow this to continue? People like him end up in management because other dumb people believe he knows what he is talking about. and then they end up telling people like us what to do and get paid a lot more to tell us. And it's all crap that we refused to read for free and now its on us to implement the vision.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:48AM

    by bob_super (1357) on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:48AM (#489457)

    > but I don't see ALL business users using a docked smartphone to do serious tasks anytime soon.

    Well, the phone CPUs are getting powerful enough for that, and since Office 365 works...
    As long as the CxO is happy with a shiny tablet and wireless folding keyboard, whole companies could change over quickly.