Thanks to Jeremy Reimer I was able to create the following view into the history of computer platforms.
I added data from the smartphone industry, Apple and updated the PC
industry figures with those from Gartner. Note the log scale.
The same information is available as an animation in the following video (Music by Nora Tagle):
This data combines several “categories” of products and is not
complete in that not all mobile phone platforms are represented.
However, the zooming out offers several possible observations into the
state of the “personal computing” world as of today.
We cannot consider the iPad as a “niche”. The absolute volume of
units sold after less than two years is enough to place it within an
order of magnitude of all PCs sold. We can also observe that it has a
higher trajectory than the iPhone which became a disruptive force in
itself. Compare these challengers to NeXT in 1991.
The “entrants” into personal computing, the iPad, iPhone and
Android, have a combined volume that is higher than the PCs sold in the
same period (358 million estimated iOS+Android vs. 336 million PCs
excluding Macs in 2011.) The growth rate and the scale itself combine to
make the entrants impossible to ignore.
There is a distinct grouping of platform options into three phases
or eras. The first lasting from 1975 to 1991 was an era of rapid growth
but also of multiple standards and experiments. It was typical of an
industry in emergence. The personalization of computing brought about a
new set of entrants. The second phase lasted between 1991 and 2007 and
was characterized by a near monopoly of Microsoft, but, crucially one
alternative platform did survive. The third phase can be seen as
starting five years ago with the emergence of the iPhone and its
derivatives. It has similarities to the first phase.
We can also look at the data through a slightly different view:
market share. Share is a bit more subjective because we need to combine
products in ways that are considered comparable (or competing).
First, this is a “traditionalist” view of the PC market as defined by Gartner and IDC, and excluding tablets and smartphones.
This view would imply that the PC market is not changing in any
substantial way. Although the Mac platform is gaining share, there is no
significant erosion in the power of the incumbent.
Second, is a view where the iPad is added to the traditionalist view.
This view is more alarming. Given the first chart, in order for the
iPad to be significant, it would need to be “visible” for a market that
already ships over 350 million units. And there it is. If counted, the
iPad begins to show the first disruption in the status quo since 1991.
The third view is with the addition of iPhone and Android.
This last view corresponds to the data in the first graph (line
chart). If iOS and Android are added as potential substitutions for
personal computing, the share of PCs suddenly collapses to less than
50%. It also suggests much more collapse to come.
I will concede that this last view is extremist. It does not reflect a
competition that exists in real life. However, I put this data together
to show a historic pattern. Sometimes extremism is a better point of
view than conservatism. Ignoring this view is very harmful as these
not-good-enough computers will surely get better. A competitor that has
no strategy to deal with this shift is likely to suffer the fate of
those companies in the left side of the chart. Treating the first share
chart as reality is surely much more dangerous than contemplating the
third.
I’ve used anecdotes
in the past to tell the story of the disruptive shift in the fortunes
of computing incumbents and entrants. I’ve also shown how the entry of
smart devices has disrupted the telecom world and caused a transfer of
wealth away from the old guard.
The data shown here frames these anecdotes. The data is not the whole story but it solidifies what should be an intuition.