Posts tagged with PCs

There is a “waterfall” theory that has a well known application to car design but that is also misapplied to the PC industry. In the car world, features that first appear in high-end cars eventually become standard. You used to pay a significant amount for a CD player while now they are standard for most models; the high end cars have moved onto MP3 or satellite players.

Unfortunately, the same basic assumption about the “waterfall” effect has plagued the PC world.

For years, the conventional wisdom has been to load high-end features in the business PC, with everyday consumers eventually benefitting from those features when they became “commoditized”. You’ll recall the conversations along the lines of, “No one buys an Apple computer because you can’t run the same software on them that you run at work.” Other than for high-end gamers, the convention wisdom has been that consumers need only low- powered, low-end machines.

Clearly, the world has changed.

Video, music, pictures and other “blobs” (binary large objects) have changed the requirements for consumer PCs. Today everyday users expect superior graphics, powerful hard-drives, more memory and sometimes even faster processors than many business users. Running primarily Microsoft Office, Excel and Internet Explorer, on the other hand, has rendered business users the ones needing only lower-capability machines.

Yet, the typical business user’s workload requirement is in stark contrast to the amount that businesses generally pay for the machines their employees use. I am willing to bet that if you are reading this at work, the PC you are using costs as much as double the average PC in your local retailer ― and is likely significantly less powerful. IT departments tell you that they pay for other things like maintenance and warranties, software and support, all things you might not get on your store bought PC. And business PCs can sometimes be loaded with features that IT buys for insurance but are never used.

Many business users don’t like their work PCs because they are heavy and don’t compete with more compelling looking consumer PCs. You have to give Apple credit for a massive rethinking of PC industrial design. The PC is now a mainstream fashion and status statement (with some exceptions of course). Dell has colorful tops; HP offers sharp design.

But this is an evolving landscape. The expectations for and cost of retail PCs is going to change the way businesses think. At a Gartner conference last month I learned the name for this phenomenon: “consumerization”.

To quote a recent report from Gartner*: “The consumerization of IT focuses on how enterprises will be affected by and can take advantage of new technologies and models that originate and develop in the consumer space, rather than in the enterprise IT sector.”

Over the next few years we will likely see more and more effects from consumerization that will go beyond design to the software, networking and all other elements of our experience. Personally, I travel with an HP DV2 and would like to move to the new HP DM3. It’s great for work, and it plays music, video and other blobs.

I think I may have already been consumerized.

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

 *source: Gartner, Inc. “Key Issues for the Consumerization of IT, 2009″, February 3, 2009