Does rise of tablets mean end of PCs

Remember the days when your only option for connecting to the Internet was to boot up your PC or laptop? Well, those days are definitely gone. You’ve got more options than ever before to access the Internet, anything from your smartphone to your tablet to your video-game console. And that, as much as anything, is sending PC sales straight into a downward spiral. Web site Business Insider has even declared this the end of the PC era.

The death of the PC?

Think of the way you search the Internet. How frequently do you boot up your PC? Now, how frequently do you log onto Mapquest within your smartphone or check the weather report from your iPad? And you’re hardly alone. People today want their info quickly. And they’re getting it online using their smartphones and tablets as they’re on the move. Waiting to get in front of a desktop PC seems rather antiquated today. That’s why, as reported by the Business Insider story, the sales of PCs have been flat since 2009. It’s also why purchasers now buy more smartphones than desktop computers.

Consumers want tablets

And what growth that’s coming in computer sales is not from PCs but from tablets. According to the numbers from Gartner, IDC and Strategy Analytics, tablet sales are now higher than PC sales, too. In a rather surprising result, Business Insider has found that U.S. consumers so love the iPad that they are buying more than one per household. In July of 2012, 32.3 percent of consumers said their households had two iPads. Another 10.1 percent reported they had three, while 4.9 percent said they had more than four.

No young love for PCs

The future doesn’t look much better for PC makers. Business Insider, relying on numbers from Nielsen, found that about 40 percent of consumers 13 and older want to purchase tablets in the next half-year. Quite a bit less impressive is the number who want to buy PCs. Only 19 percent are interested in computers. And the news is even worse for PC makers when considering young consumers. Business Insider reported that a massive 75 percent or so of young consumers want to purchase tablets in the next six months, compared to just 30 percent who want to buy a PC.