Is that the right approach? Ultrabooks are the natural evolution of the 'bog-standard' laptop. If anything, Windows 7 will keep Ultrabooks in play at least for the next couple of years.
Windows 8 will in my view be a flop on the desktop and Microsoft will panic, undo the changes, and Windows 9 will spin back round and focus back on the traditional PC. I'm a pre-post-PC optimist. I think there will clearly be some demand for Ultrabooks and Windows 8, but as to how deep it will be compared to tablets and traditional laptops running Windows 7 I cannot say. I can say, however, that by not investing in ARM-based semiconductor technologies, Intel doesn't have much of a Plan B. Thankfully Microsoft has seen the light and knows the way forward.
Actually, Microsoft looked at what Apple was doing and pretty much copied it word for word. Microsoft had to appease two markets: PCs on the desktop, and tablets to compete with the iPad. As per the previous question, Microsoft can't lose. Or, if it does, it loses catastrophically and goes down with the rest of the PC making business. At the end of the day, Foxconn and plants that actually build PCs do not care whether it builds PCs or tablets. Neither does Microsoft, as long as PC builders know what they're doing.
Microsoft has always had an active role in the development of the Personal Computer between Intel and the PC vendors, so I don't see any fundamental difference in what they are doing with Windows 8 than what they did before.
However, there can be no denying that with Windows RT, the company is hedging its bets between Intel and ARM, which is obviously making its traditional partners nervous since a huge amount of their revenue stream has been Intel and Windows RT's success is not necessarily assured. This is a big deal. When we look at the PC ecosystem with Microsoft, Intel, and all of the PC manufacturers, how do you see them navigating this transition?
It's simple. If they don't adapt for the post-PC market -- and I'm talking about HP and Dell again -- the chances are they won't survive. Look up from the ground before you trip up. Having said that, those who join the game and try to compete may end up losing at the hands of better competing products. The thing is: PCs all look the same and function in the same way.
Either way, PCs are stuck in this stagnant place where it doesn't matter to the end consumer which PC they get. For the business, they certainly don't. They just want it to be the cheapest for the value they get.
Microsoft as a company will continue to survive by transitioning a large portion of its software business towards the enterprise and server-based computing. The consumer and business conversion to the Metro UI in Windows 8 will be a slow one while enterprises retain a significant amount of Winbased desktop software infrastructure, while its enterprise business will continue to be strong and even expand. However, the continued health of its traditional partners such as HP and Dell are not necessarily guaranteed, as I have explained above.
It's the flip side to the previous questions: those who have not kept up with the post-PC evolution, and have failed to adapt their business models and processes to the developing tablet and cloud market, will be left behind. HP and Dell are plain PC makers, and both have suffered at the hands of the early tablet market in the late's. That said, while Dell really fell flat on its face, at least HP had the TouchPad, even if it was doomed from the start. I think any company which has had revenues that are heavily dependent on PC manufacturing and sales had better start thinking about diversification and eliminating redundant products.
Obviously, the big targets are Hewlett-Packard and Dell. Dell may still weather the storm because it recently bought WYSE, indicating a future emphasis towards smart devices, VDI and thin clients. Certainly I would say -- at least by my definition of the post-PC world -- cloud companies and PC makers that have or are imminantely ventured into the tablet industry.
With that, I'm looking at Apple and Microsoft. Apple is in the perfect position because it has the entire ecosystem at its disposal. It has the iOS-running iPad and already has the lead in the tablet market. In fact, Apple is the tablet market. Windows will likely reign, but on the tablet format it will be interesting to see how it compares with iOS.
I think Apple will likely stick to its guns and develop for its platform only, locking in users, while Microsoft will likely extend a productivity olive branch to its iPad-using rivals.
Microsoft, if it manages to work its way in, could benefit if it doesn't completely screw up Windows 8, which it already has. People don't want a Windows-running tablet: they want a tablet running Office.
Apple obviously has an extremely large lead in Post-PC devices with its own iPad, and everyone else is currently at a disadvantage due to its market penetration and the maturity of its developer ecosystem. Anyone who joins this bandwagon obviously is in a very good position to penetrate the enterprise and the consumer space as a software or services vendor.
That being said, while Microsoft's current mobile offerings have had a lukewarm reception in the consumer space, the company still has tremendous potential for maintaining its lead in the enterprise, given significant advancements with the upcoming releases of the Windows Server operating system, the latest incarnations of Office, as well as Windows 8 and Windows RT. And while Google and its handset OEMs are doing extremely well in the consumer smartphone space, I do not envision a pure consumerization route for Android tablets in the enterprise a la iOS in the immediate future, at least not until some initiative is taken by the company to write or provide incentives for 3rd-party developers to write enterprise-grade tablet apps, or until they provide a good management framework.
Okay, so when we talk about the "Post PC" world, what are we really talking about? For the average business professional and the average company, how does this look different than the past decade?
Let's just say for the sake of argument and precedence that Jason is right. We are in a post-PC world. So what is it? The post-PC world does not necessarily mean the traditional PC is dead. Far from. It just means we're including tablets into the fold. The cloud convergence is where we start to see the post-PC world. I would argue that actually, the post-PC world is not a world where PCs no longer exist.
I see it as always-connected devices, including tablets and PCs, that have access to a hard-drive in the cloud. All in all, it means instead of storing our documents locally, they will be available anywhere and everywhere at any given time day or night. Datacenters will pop up overnight, hard drive makers will adapt or go bust in the enterprise market, and governments will eventually -- I hasten to add -- wake up to the borderless cloud problem.
The Post-PC world represents a displacement of computing from the traditional, 30 year-old Intel architecture used on desktop to the Datacenter and the Cloud. In essence, we are returning to a very similar highly centralized model that was popular in the late 60's and mid's with mainframe-based computing.
The only difference is that instead of a monolithic, purely mainframe-based time sharing model, our new centralized architecture can be distributed within multiple datacenters, using Public and Private Cloud infrastructure using heterogeneous vendor systems architectures and is more resilient and more flexible than ever before. In addition, I see the application programming standards used by today's most popular mobile operating systems -- iOS and Android -- being used heavily in business environments to provide the front ends to these Web APIs.
What kinds of technologies -- both hardware and software -- are going to rule in the Post PC era and how does this play into the BYOD trend? Because tablets are 'lesser' devices than their PC cousins -- lacking physical keyboards for 'actual' productivity and hard drive space for files -- a lot of tablets outsource to the cloud.
Having said that, with flash memory, it keeps tablets competitive. It also means they're more expensive compared to the whizzing hard-drive-using PC counterparts. The trouble is: you can't really bring your own cloud.
Dropbox works well for ordinary consumers, as does SkyDrive, but Google Drive has still -- hmmm -- a way to go, let's say. There is no crossover from personal cloud to enterprise cloud, and this falls in conflict with the BYOD trend. You can bring your own cloud-enabled device from home, but find that it is stuck in either work-mode or home-mode, and there's no middle ground.
It requires too much process, too much battery power, too much storage, and too much keyboard. That may well be too late.
Android tablet software still lags; the operating system has not made nearly as much progress on tablets as on phones. But Google and its partners will get it right sooner or later, and probably before Microsoft.
None of this means that Microsoft is going away. For some business users, Gates might even be right about tablets: they need Office worse than they need the elegance and simplicty of an iPad. But with the mass of consumers, for whom a conventional PC is more likely to be a place where they store stuff rather than do stuff, Microsoft is in real trouble with no easy way out.
Steve Wildstrom on May 8, To survive in the post-PC era, device manufacturers must get tough: Pick sides in the platform wars.
Device manufacturers need to concentrate their resources and commit to a single platform if they expect to develop compelling and innovative products that can compete against Apple. Start playing hardball with Google and Microsoft. When Nokia went all-in on Microsoft, Nokia demanded special benefits, support, and concessions in exchange for platform-exclusive innovations. Other device manufacturers should replicate this model.
Push Google and Microsoft to adopt a co-opetition-based ecosystem model. In order to compete effectively against the vertically integrated ecosystems of Amazon and Apple, Google and Microsoft need to coordinate and optimize the innovation efforts of device manufacturers. Focus on bigger innovations for fewer products. Rather than churn out countless undifferentiated devices, device manufacturers need to focus on making a few highly innovative devices that can turn the tables on more-dominant players.
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