The PC industry has been predicting that the world will start to sell more laptops than PCs for several years now, but still as the numbers come in, year after year, the desktop PC sales end up still being bigger than the laptop numbers.
Last year was once again the same pattern. The IDC Quarterly PC Tracker reports in December 2007 that for the year 2007 there were a total of 110 million laptop PCs sold, but 160 million desktop PCs. The total market was 270 million PCs of any kind. Laptops accounted for 40.7% and desktops 59.3%.
As the share of laptop sales has been growing gradually since the first laptop was offered by Toshiba in Japan in 1985, and now is at just over 40% of new sales - for the total worldwide installed base of PCs, the laptop proportion is somewhat less than 40%, maybe 35% or so. At about 1 billion PCs in use of any kind, that means under 350 million are reasonably movable/portable (not all laptops are actually moved about). That number is quite interesting when we consider they sold 1.15 Billion mobile phones last year, and of the 3.4 billion active mobile phone subscriptions around the world, already 415 million are of the high-speed 3G or faster phones (large colour screen cameraphones, high speed data, internet access etc). These are not all connected to 3G networks, but have that kind of rather advanced mobile internet capabilities (bear in mind the iPhone is not a 3G phone). More 3G phones than all laptops in use. Hmmm. Makes you think.
And talking about the 2.5G phones, GPRS, 1x RTT, EDGE etc phones (like the iPhone) - there are already 2.36 Billion such devices, 2,360 million of them - nearly 7 times more "data capable" mobile phones than all laptops of any kind - bearing in mind not all laptops are necessarily WiFi or wireless enabled (while today most already are).
Yes, I was surprised. I thought we'd finally reached that point in history, when more laptops were sold than desktop PCs. Maybe this year, ha-ha..
I think this is confusing form and function. People are using desktops as data servers, stuffed full of music, photos and videos. Plus they're also using desktop PCs for high-end games using graphics cards that would leave scorch marks across your lap. Different sets of needs entirely, despite the common technology platform.
Rather than seeing these as competing platforms, the winning model is one that understands how they are complementary. We won't see "everything goes to the mobile" and more than cars got rid of trains. Each has its own purpose. Apple get this, with the easy provisioning and sync of an iPhone from a Mac or PC. Why can't my phone beam pictures to any of the big screens around my house?
Posted by: Martin Geddes | March 24, 2008 at 12:12 PM