What's happening to 'Computer Companies?"

What's happening to 'Computer Companies?"

Apple launches iTunes music service, becoming a music retailer. Dell is dropping "computer" from its name. Why is 'computer' becoming a not so nice word ?


Because PC is on its way out. What's in is uncertain. Is it the Internet appliance, interactive TV, Airboards, Tablets, handhelds, or SPOTS or smart phone? No one knows. But everyone does know that the day of the PC's is gone.

Noone talks anymore about ' putting a PC on everyone's desk' or about connecting every PC to the Net, giving everyone a email ID or a browser.

The ground is shifting and non-PC devices are breaching the castle doors.

As Apple demonstrates, there might not be PC companies anymore, just services companies.

Sony sells computers, but it is not a PC company. It aims to create unique platforms and experiences, and market the hell out of them. It is more a services company than a product company.

Bigger, faster, more features get no selling points anymore .Smarter, simpler, more efficient, and more flexible are the cool things.

Technology no longer matters. What matters is what people and companies can do with technology.

The new focus of tech is not creating faster gizmos but making it easier for companies and individuals to share data and work together using industry standards.

IT now accounts for 10 percent of the economy and nearly 60 percent of business capital.This behemoth is getting rewired from ground up.

HBR argues IT is becoming invisible like the railroads, the telegraph, electricity and the internal combustion engine.

All of these technologies aged from their boom-time youth to become "commodity inputs," That is exactly what is happening to IT

When IT becomes a commodity input, all proprietory standards vanish and power shifts to customers. They now demand a utility-style service in which they pay only for as much as they use.

Software standards enable the programmers to build new applications almost as if snapping together Lego blocks, reducing the amount of code that has to be written by hand.For example, the software for, a new credit card offering or a fraud-detection feature can be built and put into use in about two weeks; five years ago, this might have taken six months.

Enterprise technologies are also becoming commoditized and so democratised because of this on-demand computing enabled by the Internet

The PC is dead. Long live computing !