Who will it be?
Who is going to make these ultra-cheap computers? Dell? HP? Apple? Microsoft?
All of these companies are capable of producing the hardware but would they understand what they need to do? The technology industry works on certain assumptions and in order for this to succeed those assumptions have to be set aside. Most people are naturally conservative, businesses, and especially large businesses - even in the technology sector - are especially conservative. Whoever does this is not going to be a conservative, and most likely wont even be from the technology industry.
The business model for this is completely different than anything in the computer market today, this business will operate in a manner similar to that of a cheap TV vendor, nothing like a computer vendor. Whoever sells these machines will have to understand that the users will buy them and use them for years, that they wont get sales from obsolete systems every other year and high margins are a big no-no. This product will make it's money purely by volume, just like normal consumer products.
That's not to say it'll be easy just if you know that the rules are different. The hardware can be standard embedded parts or perhaps a custom design (which will save costs when produced in large quantities). Before even starting production you need to find an OS which can run applications acceptably on a machine which is lower spec than any PC on the market today. Programmers today are used to multiple GHz, hundreds of Megabytes of RAM and masses of Hard Disc space so there's not that many OSs about these days from which you can chose. Even then you'll need high volumes from the very beginning and that costs money even for low cost hardware, got $25 million spare? Then you have to sell them, but that's a whole different story.
Giants fall
In twenty years time there is a distinct that Microsoft may be just a bit player - if they still exist at all. If it sounds off the wall that a small computer could unseat the biggest giant, remember that in Part 1 I stated that we can look to the past to predict the future, this sort of change has happened before in other industries.
I am predicting a change which already has historical precedent - even in the computer industry. Go back 30 years and only one of the four companies I listed above actually existed. The PC itself brought in a massive change in the computer industry, turning it on it's head and removing it's biggest player from the top spot, IBM used to be the biggest company in the industry and indeed it was they who produced the "IBM PC", the ancestor to today's PC, but it was that same PC which went on to topple them from the top and relegated them to producing expensive business systems and chips (that said they do very nicely doing those and are by no means small).
I believe this industry is about to undergo massive changes, the rules and assumptions which have kept this industry in it's current shape for the past twenty years are changing, Microsoft will not have 415% profit margins for much longer. Nobody knows what's going to happen, we won't know until it's over, by then it will be too late and the new powers will have taken the reigns.
Rumors of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
The PC will almost certainly not "die" as such, these small computers will take over much of the market but not all of it. There will still be a market for high end performance PCs but it will be vastly smaller then the current PC market. Without the price advantages PC vendors will have to resort to new tricks to sell their wares, this will be difficult on Dell and HP but wont be a big threat to Apple who already concentrate on users who generally need more power than the low end system will provide.
It'll all happen when someone produces a computer and sells it for $100. Yes, it'll be that cheap and it'll include the OS and all the Applications necessary to be useful. I expect the price to fall significantly later but with sufficient volumes a $100 (retail price) computer can be produced today. There are choices for the OS but it could obviously not be Windows, it costs more (outside the US) than the entire system!
The Second front
The PC is under threat from other areas as well, it's not obvious right now but advances in other existing areas will produce new competitors which may provide an even greater challenge to the PC.
The PC's little brother, the PDA is also under threat, the stand alone PDA will not be around for much longer. The foe is sweeping aside the PDA with ease, but it is this same foe which will later go on to threaten the PC as well.
The PDA is under threat from Phones which are now becoming increasingly powerful, SmartPhones are now outselling PDAs 2 to 1, I expect this trend to continue. PDAs will continue to lose market share until it pretty much gets all taken away by the SmartPhones.
This will be especially prevalent In Europe where Phones are generally sold with contracts. You pay the contract monthly and a big chunk of the price is knocked off, in many cases you can expect to get the phone for no cost whatsoever. No PDA vendor can compete with free so expect even the lowest end PDAs to become under pressure, as a result they too will get telephony functionality built in.
Eventually I expect the stand alone PDA to die out as a consumer product altogether but it'll probably continue as a industrial product in some form.
- "The Future of Computing Part 3, Page 1/4"
- "The Future of Computing Part 3, Page 2/4"
- "The Future of Computing Part 3, Page 3/4"
- "The Future of Computing Part 3, Page 4/4"
