[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.