PC Collapse or PC's Plus TabletPhones?

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes says The PC industry is heading for collapse

see http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/the-pc-industry-is-heading-for-collapse/17828?tag=content;siu-container

check out the two charts of unit-share and %unit share showing increases in  phones and tablets. Still, if PC is flattening out, that's not the same as collapse and people will  still use their pc, windows 8 will let people use their PCs as tablets and drive tablet-format PCs which did not succeed before.

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | January 20, 2012, 5:51am PST

Summary: Two enormous warning signs that the PC industry as we know it is eroding away from under the OEMs.

Horace Dediu of Asymco and technical writer Jeremy Reimer have pulled together extensive historical data which covers the rise (and fall) of computing platforms since 1975, including the PC.

There’s are several aspects of this chart that are worth noting:

• ....As Dediu points out, after less than two years enough units have been sold to put it within an order of magnitude of all PCs sold. That’s incredible growth.
• Android phones are doing much better. We can easily expect Android handsets to outsell PCs by the end of the year.
• New platforms such as the iOS and Android have represented the first real challenge to the dominance of the PC since 1991 (where the PC was put under pressure by Macintosh and Amiga.

If we take a look at a second chart which shows market share over time, we can begin to see just how disruptive the combination of Android, iPhone and iPad have been, pushing the PC market share to under 50% in a few years.

So, PC shipments are flat-lining, and the market share of the platform has fallen to below 50%.