Be Prepared: We're Entering A
Post-Device Era
The new frontier in
personal computing may be cloud services that run on less powerful devices.
Apple
Inc. CEO Steve Jobs holds up the new iPad as he speaks during an Apple Special
Event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts January 27, 2010, in San Francisco,
California.
One of the most famous tech-related commentaries expressed in the
past 10 years is Steve Jobs’s declaration of the "post-PC era." While
the Apple founder's quote in early June of 2010 referred specifically to the
revolution that the iPad was expected to bring, the phrase has evolved into a
nearly universal commentary about transitions in the tech market.
As Jobs himself pointed out, the comment was not meant to imply
that PCs were going away (although many did interpret it that way), but that
they would take on a more specialized role—as trucks do in the overall world of
transportation, he said. Using that same logic, I believe it’s time to
acknowledge that we’re now also in a "post-tablet" and even a
"post-smartphone" era.
I argue that we’re entering a "post-device" era.
Jobs’s comments were justified because at the time PC growth was
slowing and further declines were predicted. In fact, overall worldwide PC
market shipments peaked in the fourth quarter of 2011 and have slowly declined
ever since.
The same thing has happened to tablets. While some naively
predicted that tablets would one day replace PCs, the worldwide tablet market never
reached the same level as PCs, and with very few exceptions, tablets never
became the general purpose computing device that many envisioned. Instead,
worldwide tablet shipments peaked in the fourth quarter of 2013—just two years
after PCs did—and have slowly declined ever since.
Now, I believe we’re seeing the same phenomenon occur in the world
of smartphones. While it’s too early to be certain—it’ll probably take 12-18
months before we know for sure—I believe worldwide smartphone shipments
probably peaked in the fourth quarter of 2015. Again, two years after the
previous hot category (tablets).
It’s not just me either. More and more market indicators—including
lower than expected sales and relatively gloomy forecasts from component
makers, device builders, and the phone brands themselves—suggest that we've
already hit "peak smartphone."
As with PCs and tablets, this doesn’t mean smartphones are going
away—far from it. In many parts of the world, smartphones have become a more
general purpose computing device for a larger segment of the population than
PCs and tablets combined. But it’s also becoming increasingly clear to me that
smartphones—with their millions of different platform-specific,
function-specific mobile apps—aren't the future of personal computing.
And there is no obvious successor to the smartphone on the
horizon. Yes, there are some important new categories coming, but none have the
potential to reshape the computing landscape (or reach the hundreds of millions
in annual shipment levels) as PCs, tablets, and smartphones have done. The
Wearable Era? I don’t think so. The Era of VR and AR? Intriguing, but not
likely, at least not soon. Even smart, connected, and autonomous cars, though
they’re bound to be very important, probably won’t trigger a transition of the
magnitude that a "Jobsian era change" implies.
Instead, the future of computing seems to be about a set of
platform and device-independent services. Specifically, voice-based
interactions, driven by large installations of cloud-based servers running deep
learning-based algorithms are what’s hot these days. This kind of computing
model doesn’t necessarily need the kind of local horsepower that traditional
computing devices have had. Indeed, these types of services can be accessed by
the simplest of devices, with little more than an audio input, an audio output,
and a wireless connection. Obviously, not everything that people want to do
with intelligent devices can be achieved with this model, but the ability to
have information delivered—and actions taken—by simply speaking does suggest an
exciting new era that’s less dependent on traditional devices.
The implications of this shift are profound. For a company like
Apple, being the premier device maker in the post- device era is a sort of dystopian
nightmare, where the company’s impressive abilities to generate better and
better devices will be appreciated by a decreasing number of customers. There’s
a reason the company has been so focused on services recently (though counting
an app sale on the iTunes store as a service, as they currently do, doesn’t
really seem to fit the services-focused world toward which I believe we are
headed).
As for other hardware makers, the challenges are even more
intense. They'll battle over existing (and even future) device categories, but
that’s a tough situation to be in. Creating, purchasing and/or partnering for
services that can be leveraged across multiple devices will be important for
long-time survival and success.
As with the other transitions, the move to a post-device,
services-led era won't mean the end for traditional devices. They're needed to
deliver the services, after all. Still, device-makers will need to evolve the
way they think to survive and thrive in the coming era. The transition is bound
to create both unexpected challenges and real opportunities.
BOB O'DONNELL
http://www.fastcompany.com/3061084/were-way-past-steve-jobs-post-pc-era-and-headed-for-a-post-device-future
No comments:
Post a Comment