Microsoft threatened as smartphones and tablets rise, Gartner warns
PC market begins to slip and tablets will outsell desktops and laptops combined by 2015, as Android ascendancy means challenge to relevance of Microsoft, research group warns — Microsoft faces a slide into irrelevance …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's public posture had moved from a 2011 suggestion that tablets might be a passing phenomenon to 2012 coverage depicting a struggling mobile comeback. Gartner's forecast turns that product debate into a platform-risk argument: declining PCs would shrink the centrality of the market where Microsoft has been strongest while Android gains device-market reach.
First-order effects
- Microsoft faces greater pressure to make its tablet strategy credible, as Gartner expects tablets to overtake desktops and laptops combined by 2015.
- Android's ascendancy gains strategic weight: Gartner explicitly frames it as a challenge to Microsoft's relevance as computing shifts beyond PCs.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's tablet effort becomes a more important counterweight to Android, rather than a side project alongside the PC business.
- Software developers and device makers have a stronger incentive to prioritize smartphone and tablet platforms as Gartner forecasts a declining PC market.
Third-order effects
- If Gartner's forecast holds, operating-system competition will be organized less around the desktop and more around mobile device ecosystems, weakening the PC's role as the default software distribution point.
The trend: Personal computing is shifting from PC-centered software platforms toward smartphone and tablet ecosystems, with Android's scale pressuring Microsoft's position.