The Morning Download: Death Knell for the PC Era - Wall Street Journal (blog)

The Morning Download: Death Knell for the PC Era - Wall Street Journal (blog)

Good morning. That sound you heard Wednesday was the death rattle of the PC era. The inexorable decline of the desktop computer has accelerated sharply; depending on whether you believe IDC or Gartner, world-wide shipments fell by either 14% or 11% during the first three months of 2013. Just as with the fall of Rome, the reasons are manifold. Gartner tells the Journal that the decline has been fueled by greater consumer interest in touch devices. IDC, on the other hand, blames Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system â€" and its new user interface, seen as frustrating and confusing to many customers. Business customers are echoing the latter sentiment; Tracey Rothenberger, formerly the CIO at Ricoh Americas, and now its COO, says the benefits of switching to the new OS aren’t worth the effort of training employees to use it. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. But I think there’s minimal value in the incremental changes that a re there,” he told CIO Journal.

Source Article from http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/04/11/the-morning-download-death-knell-for-the-pc-era/