PC Won't be So "Personal" in Future

How people use PCs at home is changing, with most likely to shift to a "shared" device model, with the personal devices becoming the smart phone and tablet, one might suggest. As once was the case with additional access lines in the home being purchased for teenagers, fax machines or dial-up Internet access, a shift in demand might be occurring.

The change is that although most homes will keep a PC for content creation, on a shared basis, spending that once went for "personal" PCs might be shifting to tablets. That means the replacement PC market will shrink. 

“Tablets have dramatically changed the device landscape for PCs, not so much by ‘cannibalizing’ PC sales, but by causing PC users to shift consumption to tablets rather than replacing older PCs,” says Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner principal analyst.

That implies a market where most people will use "personal" tablets as the primary Internet appliance, while the shared PC gets used when people have to create content. That might also imply that the replacement PC market will shrink, as PCs will be retired and replaced by tablets over time, with only one PC in a home upgraded over time as the shared content creation device.

So PCs will tend to become less "personal," becoming a shared use device, more like a TV screen or microwave oven, in that sense.