The bean counters at IDC are predicting that by 2015, thanks to tablets, smartphones, and ubiquitous connectivity, unless you’re an AT&T customer that is, Americans will be using their mobile devices to access the internet more than what we’ve traditionally known as the “personal computer”. We say “personal computer”, because that term is going to be radically altered in just a few short years. By the end of 2012 Microsoft is expected to ship their next version of Windows, aptly called Windows 8, and it’ll run on both x86 and ARM chips, which the latter is being used exclusively to power smartphones and tablets today. There’s also speculation that at some point in the future, Apple is going to dump Intel like the money sucking wife it is and switch to ARM for their entire computing lineup.
Karsten Weide, Research Vice President, Media and Entertainment at IDC says: “Forget what we have taken for granted on how consumers use the Internet. Soon, more users will access the Web using mobile devices than using PCs, and it’s going to make the Internet a very different place.” In that kind of world, you’d expect people to start taking building mobile applications and mobile sites more seriously than their respective desktop variants. In places like Africa, India, and other emerging territories, the “mobile first” approach already exists since PCs are too big, too expensive, and use too much power, but at the same time nearly everyone has a mobile phone. That landscape will never hit the Western World since we’re rich enough to have a PC, a mobile phone, and some people even have a tablet, creating the ultimate trifecta, but which of those will we reach for the most during the day is due to change.
How has mobile changed the way you use your PC? Is it collecting dust, sitting on your desk, begging for some attention?