The continued decline of South Africa’s PC market signals the end of the desktop computing era, says Brian Timperley of CloudGate — and the question of what will ultimately replace it remains wide open.
“IDC claimed recently that the PC market in Africa and the Middle East was recovering,” says Timperley. “But frankly, statistics that lump the whole of Africa together with countries as far away as Pakistan are a joke. In addition, the growth they claimed for the second quarter of 2014 was just 2.2% off a low base – and overall growth for 2014 is predicted to remain flat at 1.6%. Far from being a sign of recovery, that’s confirmation that the last nails are being hammered into the coffin of the traditional desktop PC. Our own research suggests that South Africa’s PC market is declining quite dramatically.”
“The desktop computing paradigm has its roots in the 1980s, before the Internet, when the most cost-effective option was to keep all the computing power and data in one place,” adds Timperley. “At that stage, the extra complexity and the costs of maintenance and support were bearable. But 30 years on, the equation has shifted. The desktop PC is now by far the most cumbersome and expensive way to do computing.”
Timperley says the plummeting costs of connectivity, cloud-based storage and cloud-based applications are driving a strong move away from the PC. “Google is now essentially giving storage away,” he says, “and between Google’s own office productivity suite and Microsoft’s Office 365, there is no longer any need to incur the hassle and expense of buying, configuring, maintaining and supporting desktop PCs.”
For some, laptops and notebooks are the solution; others turn to tablets. However, says Timperley, “these both still have limitations. Notebooks are expensive, and tablets lack much of the ability to create that comes with having a mouse and keyboard to work with. There’s still a great need for a low-cost desktop alternative that builds on the power and flexibility of cloud-based computing.
In Turrito Networks’ own office, says Timperley, “we have moved away from Windows-based desktops and other devices entirely. Those who need mobility or serious desktop computing power have Macs; everyone else is using our CloudGate Android desktop. Users love it, and our software, maintenance, power and support costs have all dropped.”
Fears that South Africa doesn’t have good enough connectivity to support cloud computing are a red herring, says Timperley. “Bandwidth challenges exist, but improved accessibility to broadband, together with advances in virtualization technologies, mean people can continue to be productive even if their primary business connection falls over and they’re reduced to Edge connections on their phones. Compared to the time people accept wasting on antivirus checks, software updates and reboots on PCs, the ever-declining time lost to poor connectivity doesn’t really feature.”
