Counting Tablets as PCs

Frank Shaw, writing from the D11 conference:

On one hand, looking around the conference, there were iPads and other tablets as far as the eye could see. On the other hand, (as I noted in a tweet), most of the people around me were using their iPads exactly as they would a laptop — physical keyboard attached, typing away, connected to a network of some kind, creating a document or tweet or blog or article. In that context, it’s hard to distinguish between a tablet and a notebook or laptop. The form factors are different, but let’s be clear, each is a PC.

You could have won a lot of money making bar bets a decade ago that in 2013, Microsoft’s communications chief would make an argument that positions Apple as the number one maker of PCs by volume in the world.

It’s a good piece, and I agree with his conclusion:

When you strip away all the post-PC rhetoric, maybe we’re all saying the same thing — the future is about killer devices connected to amazing cloud services. That’s the future Microsoft is embracing, and that’s the future that everyone here at the D Conference is excited about.

★ Friday, 31 May 2013