Sales of mobile devices continue to rise, but PC sales are slumping. Indeed, the mobile market?if you believe the hype?seems to be the entirety of the next phase of computing, leaving desktop and, to some extent, even laptop computers in the dusty past. ARM, encouraged by its overwhelming success in mobile devices, is positioning its low-power technology to gain a foothold in servers, the workhorses of IT infrastructure. But is the future of the PC really this gloomy?
Mobile Devices Grow
The mobile sector has a strong edge in growth relative to PCs. Bloomberg (?Weak Windows 8 Demand Saps PC Sales, Fujitsu President Says?) notes, ?U.S. retail sales of devices running Windows fell 21 percent from a year earlier in the four weeks after Microsoft released Windows 8 on Oct. 26, according to a Nov. 29 report by Port Washington, New York-based NPD Group Inc. The decrease has been fueled by a 24 percent drop in sales of notebook computers as customers opt for Apple Inc.?s iPad or tablets powered by Google Inc.?s Android software.?
The buzz of the computing market these days seldom, if ever, centers on a new desktop computer or processor, and even laptops fail to garner much attention. (The main exception is the Ultrabook project, which nevertheless is seeing little uptake owing to fairly high prices.) And when was the last time you heard about a PC manufacturer suing another PC manufacturer over rounded corners on a desktop tower case? If patent litigation is any indication, the computing market is focused on mobile. The question, given the strong growth in mobile devices, is whether the current situation indicates the end of the PC or is a confluence of other factors.
PCs Are Not Dead
ZDNet (?What?s behind the slump in PC sales? Can the industry turn around??) offers a simple explanation for the recent poor sales of PCs: ?PCs are for work, tablets are for fun. That is all the economic analysis you need to understand why PC sales in the fourth quarter of 2012?have been lackluster.? This statement draws on two important facts. First, from a technology standpoint, mobile devices cannot (yet) compete with desktop and laptop PCs on the productivity front. If you?ve experienced the frustration of a touchscreen keyboard, for instance, then you probably recognize this point. Mobile devices cater largely to the demand for entertainment: music, videos, pictures, e-books, social networking, voice-over-IP telephony and videoconferencing, games and so on. For consumers who want a computer for these purposes?not so much for developing content or performing compute-intensive tasks like image processing or serious programming?mobile devices like tablets are often a superior option relative to PCs. They are smaller (less clutter), portable (they go with you, rather than requiring you to go to them) and ?cooler.?
Second, given their function as work machines rather than almost exclusively ?play? machines, PCs suffer from the ongoing economic woes. Why buy a PC to do work when it doesn?t provide any returns, owing in part to a lousy economy? Cash-strapped companies aren?t hiring, so they don?t need to support a larger workforce. To make matters worse, this year?s desktop PC simply isn?t that much greater than last year?s?a change relative to the situation 10 years ago, when PC power was growing much more rapidly. So, companies (and consumers) need not upgrade their computing equipment as often to keep pace with the state of the art.
Thus, although some cannibalization of the PC market by tablets and smartphones is only to be expected?many consumers can now get everything they want from a tablet, so why buy a desktop or laptop??this cannibalization will not consume the entire PC market. Productivity is still safely dominated by desktops and, to a lesser extent, laptops. (Do you really think all those mobile apps were programmed using a tablet or smartphone?) But will the computing power of mobile devices catch up with PCs? Inroads by ARM into servers may provide some pause to consider this possibility.
StrongARMing Intel
ARM is the overwhelming giant in mobile processors. Virtually every mobile device employs a CPU based on an ARM architecture. The IP company has specialized in low-power designs to enable greater efficiency?a critical feature for mobile devices, which run on batteries. Intel, on the other hand, has focused primarily on computing performance. Although its chips have historically been power hogs, they also deliver the greatest performance; the company?s Xeon line, for instance, dominates the server industry. The company?s x86 architecture is also dominant in PCs.
ARM, however, is not content to dominate just the mobile market. It is aiming to enter the server market by exploiting data center operators? concerns over growing power consumption. And Intel has been focusing more on lower-power devices to serve the mobile market; it hopes to bring the software ecosystem built around x86 to bear. Although ARM seems to have the momentum, its inroads into servers will likely remain limited to specific applications. Although ARM-based server processors may provide more efficiency in certain cases, Intel?s Xeon line still mops up the competition on heavy workloads.
Mobile Mania
Mobile mania thus has its limits. ARM, the undisputed king of mobile processing, probably won?t supplant Intel in the data center, although it may secure a limited place for certain uses. PCs won?t be replaced wholesale by tablets and smartphones. These latter devices have their uses that PCs?even laptops?can?t serve, but likewise, PCs offer functions and conveniences for productivity and content development that tablets can?t touch. But what about a processor that offers the best of both worlds, leading compute performance and low power usage? Although there is some overlap, more performance generally means more power consumption. Thus, the processors that work best for mobile devices (given their inherent limitation of battery life) simply won?t do the job of a PC processor, which has an essentially unlimited power supply in the wall socket. In data centers, ARM-based processors (which, here, really can no longer be considered mobile, although they do exploit technology developed for mobile use) may secure some share, but they won?t replace the current ?PC-like? server processors developed by Intel.
As with PC sales, mobile sales will likely level off when mobile-processor efficiency meets the limits of battery technology. At this point, this year?s mobile device will no longer be so much greater than last year?s, and upgrades will be less appealing?particularly if the economy continues to sour. PC sales may remain slow, but they will by no means come to a (near) halt because of cannibalization by mobile devices. Instead, a proper balance will be reached, where users who look for entertainment will go to mobile devices, and users who look for productivity will go to PCs. For data centers, ARM processors will increase in performance, sacrificing some energy efficiency, and (some) Intel processors will increase in energy efficiency, sacrificing some performance. But each architecture will likely have its own domain, with little overlap. The PC is thus still alive; we are simply witnessing a balancing of markets, where each device and type of processor is finding its place?no longer must a single device or processor type try to do all things well.
Photo courtesy of IntelFreePress
About Jeff Clark
Jeff Clark is editor for the Data Center Journal. He holds a bachelor?s degree in physics from the University of Richmond, as well as master?s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech. An author and aspiring renaissance man, his interests range from quantum mechanics and processor technology to drawing and philosophy.
Source: http://www.datacenterjournal.com/it/will-the-pc-survive-mobile-mania/
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