Business Bytes
Renee Oricchio

Let's Give The Desktop a Proper Burial

 

For those of you who read my blog on any kind of regular basis (Hi, Mom!), you know by now that I like to do things in lists of five. I cannot think of five reasons for the PC industry to keep making desktops. In fact, I can't think of one.

Apparantly, I'm not alone.

IT research and think tank, Gartner, has released its latest projections on computer sales for this year. If they are right, it will indeed be a blue, blue, blue Christmas 2009.

Gartner is projecting that the PC industry will experience its biggest drop in sales since the invention of the abacus, with a worldwide nosedive of 11.9 percent. Just to give you some perspective, that's more than three times the current record holder. In 2001, still reeling from the dot com bubble bursting and the aftermath of 9/11, total sales dropped 3.2 percent.

If Gartner is right, those were the good ole days.

Now, let's look at the numbers within the numbers.

Here's the one that jumped out at me. Desktop sales will be down more than 30%. Excuse me, that's down 30% plus from 2008 - which wasn't exactly a banner year for desktops. And why would it be?

1. Desktops take up too much space and aren't portable. Plus, they are a magnet for dust.

2. How many people are actually tied to their desk all day? Even those who primarily are cubicle bound occasionally work from home or want to take their computer to a meeting or on that rare business trip.

3. Laptops and netbooks are cheap.

4. Towers look ugly actually sitting on a desktop and putting them on the floor is a recipe for constant knee-banging and dust bunnies the size of, well, bunnies, clogging up the fan.

5. Desktops come in too many piecees; keyboards, monitors, a mouse, and the aforementioned tower. Who wants to deal with all that anymore?

It doesn't suprise me one bit that desktop sales projections are so grim.

I wonder what that apocalyptic 11.9% sales drop projection would look like if you just removed the desktop figures?
One final note...

The recession is clearly killing the industry. The other problem; it's the last year of the Windows Vista cycle. Windows 7 can't come out soon enough. I can only imagine how many businesses out there are dog paddling by until next year. I know I am. Why in the world would anyone buy a PC this year with Vista pre-loaded, only to pay for the upgrade to Windows 7 next year?

2009 is looking dismal. But, I have hope for 2010.


Renee Oricchio is a technology writer and former supervising news producer for CNN Financial News. She has been covering the computer industry since 1987. @oricchio