Post PC Era – Is it Already Here?

Let us start with an amazingly prescient Bill Gates quote, which he made circa 1999.

For most people at home and at work, the PC will remain the primary computing tool; you'll still want a big screen and a keyboard to balance your investment portfolio, write a letter to Aunt Agnes, view complex Web pages, and you'll need plenty of local processing power for graphics, games and so on. But the PC will also work in tandem with other cool devices. You'll be able to share your data — files, schedule, calendar, e-mail, address book, etc. — across different machines; you won't have to think about it; it will be automatic. If you want to find the best price for a new car — and check out your budget to see if you can afford it — you'll be able to do that at the dealership, on the device you have with you. Wherever you are, whatever you want to do, you'll have all the information you need.

Similarly, at the recent 1^st death anniversary of Steve Jobs, his amazing vision was revisited again – and true to the adage of great minds thinking alike, it was revealed that he was also thinking along the same lines as Bill Gates. Compare the visions of these two great visionaries with the reality today – and then you will truly appreciate their genius – that they could see so far into the future – and correctly too!

Microsoft, founded by Bill Gates, is at an important juncture today – the impending launch of its first ever hardware device – the widely anticipated tablet called Surface. Over the last few weeks, Microsoft has released a series of peppy Surface Tablet TV ads that have highlighted a few of the features – and the actual launch is also expected in a few days. On the back of the release of Windows 8, this will mark a major foray for Microsoft – and a brave new step into the so called “Post PC” era – so early predicted by Bill Gates himself.

For Microsoft, the launch of Surface is crucial – the sales of its much vaunted software have been flat, actually reducing – the company recently reported a 6% drop in revenues and 22% drop in net income. With computing habits decidedly shifting away from PC to mobile devices, the message was clear to the decision makers at Microsoft – evolve, or suffer.

Indeed, the trend has been decidedly in favor of moving towards introducing devices and applications that can be adapted for mobile use. This strategy has been fine tuned to perfection by Apple – which has discovered a sweet combination of software and innovative hardware that keeps it relevant to changing consumer needs and preferences.

Another example is Google – the search engine giant. Not content with dominating search alone, and obviously because they understood the future – Google has made repeated  forays into hardware – Nexus, Google TV and Chrome notebooks are just some of the examples. A recent - much talked about - Google innovation is the Google Glass Project.

Another mover and shaker that comes to mind is Amazon – the leading online retailer of the world. Indeed, it stepped into the game early – with its marquee Kindle e-reader – a great idea that bundled its virtual bookstore to a tangible piece of hardware. Later, Amazon moved up the product value chain by introducing Kindle Fire, a device that could stream videos and other media from Amazon stores – opening yet another potential revenue stream for the company.

Whether this proves to be just a transient phase in the evolution of these tech giants, or the trend of marrying hardware to software and services is here to stay – will remain a question in realm of the future. But make no mistake – the post PC era is very much here! And if your brain has become woozy from reading all this, here is a video to make you smile!