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"  In early March International Data Corp. (IDC) announced that worldwide PC sales last year fell by about 10 percent, the largest slump on record. The firm expects that sales will continue falling, albeit less dramatically, for the next two years. IDC&amp;#039;s rival Gartner had previously released similar figures, also showing a 10 percent slump in worldwide 2013 PC sales. Not only is this the worst slump on record, but total sales were reminiscent of 2009, during the throes of the Great Recession, Gartner added.  All this data is more ammunition for those eager to pronounce the death of the PC. But frankly, it may be a little early to send flowers. Yes, fewer people are ponying up for new PCs. But the PC&amp;#039;s situation may seem less dire when you look beyond the percentages to the actual numbers\u2014even after that unprecedented 10 percent plunge, 315.1 million still sold during 2013, said IDC. Three hundred million is a lot of something, indicating that a representative specimen is not likely to cause a flutter if it shows up on Antiques Roadshow. IDC expects 295.9 million PCs will sell this year, and 291.7 million in 2015.  That may be connected to the fact that just about everyone who wants one has one\u2014the market has long been saturated. But apparently quite a few people want one. Figures tweeted in late 2013 by the British research firm Enders Analysis show that the installed base of PCs was then about 1.6 billion and that figure is still gradually rising. (By comparison, the global population of cars is estimated to be slightly more than a billion.) Another of the PC&amp;#039;s basic problems, aside from an over-hyped death, is that global PC sales have been buoyed in the recent past by sales in developing countries, where more and more people were getting online and the PC was the default device for Internet connectivity. Today that pattern dissipated: The first web-connected device people buy is a smartphone, and if they go on to buy a bigger computing device, it&amp;#039;s a tablet, says Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. The installed base of smartphones has skyrocketed, from a paltry hundred million or so in 2010 to 1.2 billion by late 2013. It does not take much imagination to see that smartphone ownership will surpass PC ownership sometime this year. &amp;quot;Smartphones and tablets are very convenient, and consumers want content consumption, not content creation,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;For content creation they will still use a PC.&amp;quot; Indeed, &amp;quot;Tablets and smartphones are becoming PCs in different form factors,&amp;quot; noted Rob Enderle, head of the Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif. &amp;quot;When something other than the coupe version of the Model T came out, they did not say the car was dead. But I get a kick out of people saying that the PC is dying. They were saying in 1987 that the mainframe was dying, and now it&amp;#039;s IBM&amp;#039;s most profitable platform.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;If the PC is dying, it&amp;#039;s going to be a very slow death,&amp;quot; added Cheryl Currid, head of Currid &amp;amp;amp; Company, a high-tech research firm in Houston. &amp;quot;I love my tablet and my cellphone, but when I really want to get work done I&amp;#039;m married to my PC. I like the ability to compute\u2014to work with pictures, and movies, and apps that require a bit of horsepower. The faster the Internet is the more power you need, and tablets don&amp;#039;t have it.&amp;quot; As for corporate offices, where content creation is the norm, &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re still clinging to the PC, but they think they should not be\u2014from the hype they&amp;#039;ve seen about the PC dying they feel guilty about using it,&amp;quot; Currid added. For many offices, tablets\u2014designed more for play than for work\u2014can&amp;#039;t replace a PC. However, while you can put the obituaries on ice for a little while, the PC industry is still an industry with vendors who are seeing their sales slip. According to Gartner, Dell had the best 2013 sales year of the major PC makers, and Dell saw its sales drop 2.2 percent. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a10338/if-youre-waiting-for-the-death-of-the-pc-prepare-to-keep-waiting-16639081/>