The Analyst firm, Canalys, has released their latest omen for the shape of the PC industry for 2014. Truly, no one can truly know how a year will shape up, but it's interesting to get perspectives to help plan. It's like trying to forecast the weather, however, most times, PC forecasting is actually more accurate. Weatherman is one of those vocations where you can keep your job no matter how many screw-ups. Analyst, on the other, requires a bit more science and if a company is wrong too many times, people will stop listening. How Gartner is exempt from this rule, is still beyond me to understand.
The Canalys forecast suggests that 50% of all PCs shipped in 2014 will be tablets. This is interesting for a few reasons.
First off, Canalys states that their definition of a PC is a…
computing device designed to be operated by an individual and positioned to serve a broad range of purposes, achieved by running third-party applications, some of which can work independently of a network connection.
They go on to clarify that they differentiate a PC from a mobile device by the size of the screen. If the screen is 7 inches or larger, it's a PC.
This sort of flies in the face of the norm, but is completely welcome in my book. In April of this year, I talked to this in The PC is Not Dead. It’s Just Different. It's great to see someone is finally coming around to my way of thinking.
In the report, Canalys offers some additionally interesting data, showing that Android will continue its rise as the dominant tablet OS in 2014, while Apple's market share will continue its decline. So, really, more of the same. But, as Canalys states, Microsoft's tablet share will increase. Not by much, taking a mere 5% of the tablet market, but it's an increase, nonetheless.
Getting back to the Android supremacy, based on Canalys' definition of the PC, this really means that Android is set to the dominate the PC market, not just the tablet market, making Google's open source operating system the leader in the industry. Imagine, Google never has to invest heavily in the ill-accepted Chromebook to beat Microsoft in the OS wars. They only have to sit back and let companies like Samsung and HP do it for them. That's truly an evil genius plan. No matter what you think of Google and the company's practices, they do have a solid, take-over-the-world plan.
You can read the full text of the report announcement here: Tablets to make up 50% of PC market in 2014
