Consider the desktop. For decades, it was the king of computers. If you wanted a PC, you bought a big, boxy machine that sat on or under your desk. At first you did this because there was nothing else"”the definition of a "personal computer" was a big, boxy machine that sat on or under your desk. The possibility that it could mean anything else was the stuff of sci-fi.
Around the early 1980s, tech companies began creating the first portable machines that resemble today's laptops. Still, for many years, desktops held sway in the market, because you always had to sacrifice something to go portable. Compared with laptops, desktops had more power, bigger and brighter screens, more comfortable keyboards and pointing devices, and much more storage space. Best of all, they were cheaper. You might have bought a laptop as a second computer, but it seemed quixotic to rely on it as your main machine.
Not anymore. In the last decade, portable computers have erased many of the advantages that desktops once claimed while desktops have been unable to overcome their one glaring deficiency"”by definition, these machines are chained to your desk.
Sales data bear out this trend: The desktop is dying. In 2008, desktops were tied with laptops in the market"”about 45 percent of the PCs that American consumers purchased for personal use were desktops, about 45 percent were laptops, and the rest were netbooks and other mini computers, according to data from the market-research company Forrester. Last year, sales of laptops eclipsed sales of desktops for the first time. According to Forrester's projections, the decline in desktop PC sales will continue unabated over the next five years. Look at this graph:
Amazingly, by 2015, desktops will constitute just 18 percent of the consumer PC market, if Forrester's projections bear out. In other words, more than 80 percent of PCs will be portable. Part of this is driven by what Forrester forecasts will be the wild success of tablet computers like the iPad. In just three years' time, tablets are projected to outsell desktops, becoming the second-largest PC category after laptops. This sounds crazy until you consider that Apple alone is already selling 1 million tablets a month.
Forrester's projections reflect the shifting definition of the personal computer. In spite of their name, desktop PCs often have several users. Laptops, netbooks, and tablets are usually single-user machines"”that is, they really are personal. Modern mobile operating systems are built with room enough for one"”Apple's iOS and Google's Android are both tied in to a single user's e-mail, calendar, and app-purchasing accounts. Forrester's numbers also suggest that in the future we'll have many such machines around the house. Your "main" computer will be a laptop"”and you'll probably have several smaller, tablet-type machines that you use regularly as well.
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