[InclinedPlane]

That's actually not a relevant metric. What matters for MS is when someone buys an ipad instead of buying a new pc. That can mean not having a pc but it can also mean forgoing updating an older pc. That phenomenon seems to be occuring and it very much is affecting pc sales to the tune of billions of dollars per year.

[pmelendez]

I don't think that comparison is valid. It's like saying that MS would be worry 12 years ago because people was buying blackberry devices and wouldn't upgrade old PCs because they had a new way to send and receive emails.

Granted, you can do a lot more with an Ipad than with the 1st generation of blackberry devices but being an owner of an iPad I can't think in somebody that would prefer to write an email or a blog entry in an iPad rather than in a computer.

[InclinedPlane]

That's an interesting theory. But the fact is that the data doesn't lie. People have bought iPads and other tablets in huge numbers and their purchasing of PCs has slacked off by an enormous amount. The timing and severeness of the change is too much to be accounted for reasonably by any other phenomenon.

The conclusion is clear: people are forgoing purchases of PCs because they are buying tablets.

You may think it's ridiculous, but the market is speaking loudly with the voice of billions of dollars, and any company which ignores that is doomed.

As I pointed out, this may not be because people are not using PCs, it just means that they aren't buying new PCs. Perhaps they find that an old, clunky computer is just fine for writing emails and so-forth and their tablets and smartphones are preferable for doing everything else. Or maybe they aren't satisfied with their technology choices at all but because they spent so much money on a tablet they have to delay any updates to their laptop/desktop machine for financial reasons.

[pmelendez]

> But the fact is that the data doesn't lie

Well correlation doesn't imply causation. (http://xkcd.com/552/) Sorry I couldn't help it :P

The thing I don't think your conclusion is necessarily true. I can understand that people just don't need to upgrade their PCs as often of they used to (I noticed that on my self too). In my case, I just don't need to upgrade and since Win 8 is running faster in the same old hardware I don't see that happening anytime soon.

But the true is that people is just wasting their money in something else. I wonder if that grow in the tablet market will decline now that new game consoles cycle is coming up.

[kalid]

Imagine you're a user whose "blog" is facebook, and primarily sends texts, tweets, and 2-line status updates / comments. Email is like paper mail, used as an archive for official documents / notices, or used on the work computer for work things, and rarely replied to ("Why did you email me? Just text me or facebook me." aka "Why did you send me a real letter?").

This sounds like a hypothetical, right? My brother's laptop broke for a year, and he was fine on his phone until it was recently replaced.

[taylodl]

Did that this year. Bought an iPad instead of a new PC. I might not even do that again - thinking of buying a device like the Nexus 10 next.

I have a family with lots of eyeballs. Yes, there is still work requiring a PC and so every family should have one. But not every person in the family needs one.