Google's VP of online sales and operations has made the bold statement that in three years time desktop computers will be irrelevant.
Speaking at UCD in Dublin yesterday, Google Chief John Herlihy said that smartphones enhance Google’s mission to make information universal, adding that in Japan, more research is being done on cell phones than on PCs. Herlihy predicted that soon smartphones will be the center of it all.
“Mobile makes the world’s information universally accessible," he said. "Because there’s more information and because it will be hard to sift through it all, that’s why search will become more and more important. This will create new opportunities for new entrepreneurs to create new business models – ubiquity first, revenue later.”
Herlihy's statements have caused quite a stir in the tech world. There are those who wholeheartedly agree but Silicon Republic, who first reported the story, says that audience members were baffled. Indeed it's hard to imagine office cubicles without desktops and even harder to imagine laptops meeting the needs of hardcore PC gamers.
But, whether you agree with his sentiments or not, it is clear the direction Google is taking as a company. Silicon Republic reports that, not too long ago, CEO Eric Schmidt told an audience at the Mobile World Congress that the company was working on products from a 'mobile first' prospective.
"Every recent product announcement we have made – and of course we have a desktop version – is being made from the point of view of it being used on a high-performance mobile phone on all the browsers that are available," SR cites Schmidt as saying. "Now the programmers want to work on those apps for mobile that you can’t get on a desktop – applications that are personal and location-aware."
Read the full story on Silicon Republic.
UNLESS THE PRICES GOES DOWN CELL PHONE AND SUCH ARE JUST RIP OFFS!!!
What with M$ trying to rent us cloud space & Google going all mobile it really does seem the execs of theses companies really have lost touch with their target audience, guess its a case of too much time and not enough brains
they already have m.tomshardware.com. it's just crap
I would never go for a laptop for gaming, unless it's an older game, even on my NC10 i use mostly for work, and websurfing and a bit of development when i can't get to my desktop.
I would never trust my data to a cloud system
3 years is very optimistic google!
Although, a nice PC CPU powering a phone would be pretty nifty, couple that with some docking station solution and bang...best of both worlds. Portable web-browsing / small apps at stupidly fast speeds coupled with gaming in a stationary desk.
He does have a very good point about office machines. I for one don't like carting a laptop around. In my last job I used my XDA to give presentations from, meaning I could leave the laptop back in the office.
I could imagine a scenario where your phone connects wireless to your monitor, keyboard & mouse on your desk and the corporate wifi network. Keep your phone in your pocket, then just get up, walk-away with all your work in your pocket and sit down somewhere else and carry on working. Go to a client site and it's still there in your pocket.
Vendor lock-in has always been an issue so it's no different with cloud computing. But I can see big businesses liking the idea of being able to equip their staff with just a mobile and not a mobile + laptop/desktop. The IT infrastructure/support savings alone would be huge, let alone the cost of hardware refreshes every couple of years.