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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
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday April 06 2017, @08:22AM (2 children)
They are probably preparing to be your boss!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 06 2017, @04:10PM (1 child)
Already got one. Daddy owns the place.
It's a miracle his phone is still in one piece given how often he checks it while engineers are talking to him.
Great coder, horrible boss.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday April 07 2017, @04:19AM
It was a disaster in my career to have the company I worked for bought out by investors, who brought their own bosses in as well as hired their friends that had torpedoed the companies they used to work for.
These guys were men of the suit, men of the phone, men of the handshake and signature, but definitely not a man of the tool. Their skill was in getting someone else to do the technical stuff... these guys were money-handlers , kinda like gold-diggers at a night-club. They knew how to pitch the sale. They did not know how to build the thing they just sold.
These guys were great at socializing and having a good time. However I seriously doubt many of them could add water to a radiator. But the investors thought they were quite valuable and paid them accordingly.
They did not have to worry about minutiae. They had lots of money to pay someone else to handle it. Everyone else had to prepare things for these guys. These guys were mostly like food critics, not chefs.
I know from my own experience, I fell victim to the same feelings of the cappuchin monkey in that grape and cucumber experiment. Having those people brought in and me being placed subordinate to them really took the wind out of my sails.
I had to realize... I was one of the men of the tool. I made things. I had a value. I was subordinate to a man who decided whether or not I would be allowed to produce anything, and had the leadership skills to threaten me with loss of my job. On top of him was yet another man with the organizational skills to place each of us in the order of importance to the company.
The investors paid each what they thought they were worth.
The company may not have been left with many people who made things, but they did get a lot of nice expensive dinners and handshakes out of the last government contract they won.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]