Earlier this week, IDC predicted that shipments of PCs in 2013 would be down by 7.8 percent, and part of their reasoning is that tablets are taking some of the market share away from traditional desktop and laptop PCs. However, Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft"s vice president of corporate communications, thinks tablets, including Apple"s successful line of iPads, are basically PCs, just in a new form factor.
In a new post on the official Microsoft blog, Shaw stated that he was attending this week"s All Things Digital conference, where once again the the idea that we are all living in a "Post PC" was brought up in panels such as the one featuring Apple CEO Tim Cook. Shaw has a different viewpoint, saying:
On one hand, looking around the conference, there were iPads and other tablets as far as the eye could see. On the other hand ... most of the people around me were using their iPads exactly as they would a laptop – physical keyboard attached, typing away, connected to a network of some kind, creating a document or tweet or blog or article. In that context, it’s hard to distinguish between a tablet and a notebook or laptop. The form factors are different, but let’s be clear, each is a PC.
According to Microsoft"s Frank X. Shaw, this is a PC.
Oddly, Microsoft"s head of the Surface division, Panos Panay, claimed earlier this year that the company"s Surface RT is intended to be sold as a tablet, while the Surface Pro is meant to be viewed as a PC.
Shaw also used the blog post to promote Windows Phone, stating that it was too early year to count out Microsoft"s mobile OS in the marketplace when the smartphone market is still growing. He compared the industry"s current status to the "second inning in a nine-inning game, or about the 15-minute mark in a futbol match."
Source: Microsoft | Image via Brookstone