Consumers holding back on purchases
According to Network World, http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/022311-weak-pc-sales-is-it.html?source=NWWNLE_nlt_daily_am_2011-02-23, businesses are making lots of technology purposes, but consumers are not, with Dell and HP consumer spending growth near zero in the last quarter.
Analysts site several reasons, one being the economy of course. However, iPad sales also appear to have taken an impressive bite out of consumer PC sales, particularly at the low end of the PC market.
Is this something Dell, HP, and Microsoft need to be concerned about? One could point at this as affecting the “low end” of the market, hence not to worry. I’m not so sure. Decades ago, IBM had an operating system known as OS/2, initially co-developed by Microsoft. The two companies decided to part ways in 1991, and IBM geared OS/2 towards the business market while Microsoft continued development with Windows, shipping Windows 3.1 in 1992 and selling more than a million copies in the first two months of its release to both consumers and businesses. Windows 3.1’s success continued with long lines of consumers waiting to buy Windows 95 at midnight August 24, 1995.
Microsoft has always maintained its market lead due to the large number of developers involved with the product. Those developers were writing both business and consumer applications. (Is Office a business or consumer application? The answer to that would be “yes.”)
Now Apple has long lines of consumers waiting at its Apple Stores for new product releases. And lots of apps written for the iPhone.
Should Dell, HP, and Microsoft worry? I think so. Unless Windows gets its momentum back, market share erosion in the consumer market will continue – even if Windows 7 is tons better than Windows Vista. And then there’s the Windows Phone, where Microsoft is trying to come out from behind in the smartphone market. Some fortunetellers say that the phone will eventually replace desktops and laptops (See my earlier post at http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/windows-drops-below-90-market-share-according).
In the business market, there’s cloud computing to contend with. While Microsoft is busy crafting their approach to that, there’s no guarantee who will be the winner.
