While some argue that PCs have passed their prime, others say that cellphones, due to their ergonomic advantages, will never meet the needs of regular users. This dispute has been going on for several years, and the outcome is still unknown. With each passing season, a new generation of flagships is launched, each one more powerful than the preceding generation.
Our laptops and PCs are helpful in our daily lives, but are they becoming obsolete? In many ways, no; laptops and PCs are still handy, depending on your profession, hobbies, and interests. However, thanks to increasingly advanced technology, your smartphone can now perform many of the duties that were previously reserved for laptops and computers.
To name a few of these duties, smartphones are useful for checking emails, social media, browsing the web, online shopping, taking photos, and playing your favourite mobile slots game. Those are all things you would have done on your laptop or PC previously, making you wonder: are smartphones replacing laptops and PCs? Let’s delve in deeper.
When you see cell phones being used left, right, and centre, and nearly every time you walk down the street, it’s easy to believe that those tiny pocket computers have triumphed. But have they completely supplanted laptops and desktop computers as everyone’s preferred device of choice? Looking at consumption statistics, we can see that assumption is correct—or, at the very least, it is beginning to be. As of February 2022, 55% of customers use smartphones as their primary device, compared to 42% who use computers (desktop or laptop). Only 3% of people use tablets as their primary device.
It stands to reason that cell phones should now be our primary computing devices. By the end of 2021, a projected 6.06 billion smartphones were in use worldwide, three times the number of PCs. Moreover, the smartphone population is predicted to rise at a rate of 4% per year, reaching 7.69 billion by 2026.
The declining trend in computer sales is undeniable. And the implications for both public and private-sector organisations are enormous. What’s at stake? How will the future office appear in 2023? The answers to this are already being addressed by IT architectures, with plans for security, storage, and analytic capabilities. The future office is beginning to resemble the classic office with a desktop computer.
Though cellphones are incredibly adaptable, they do have drawbacks, and in certain instances, they fall short of computers. For starters, the storage capacity available on a laptop is often far greater than that accessible on a smartphone, so you can’t really rely on your smartphone to store large amounts of data, videos, and apps without having a physical or cloud backup solution. Furthermore, your storage capacity is limited if your smartphone lacks an extension slot.
Laptops can also run far more powerful software than smartphones; thus, running a larger or more complex programme on a smartphone could quickly become a difficulty, but it would not be on a laptop. These two considerations are critical, especially if your job requires you to use many software packages on your computer, which consume both processing power and storage.
We’ve all witnessed the rise of mobile computing technology first-hand over the last decade. Still, we probably don’t realise how much it has enhanced our workplace productivity. A few years ago, an employee would have been given a bulky notebook computer. This was eventually accompanied by a large cell phone.
What is driving the shift away from desktops and laptops, and toward smartphones? The answer is self-evident: price. Mobile devices outperform desktops and laptops in terms of communication capabilities. Yet, they cost half the price of a regular workstation. It’s simply a better fit-for-their-use case for information consumers.
Smartphones appear to be capable of doing anything nowadays, but that doesn’t imply we should abandon desktops. However, we must admit that smartphones can replace a wide range of devices in our lives. You don’t need a GPS device because your phone already has one, and you don’t need a good camera because every smartphone has one.
Full-sized computers still have the power and software functionality that make them valuable instruments today. Smartphones are unlikely to replace PCs for all business, work-related, and personal needs in their current state. Only time will tell whether mobile technology will finally outperform them all and PC is on its way out.
