The Death of the Laptop, I don't think so.....

There are many blogs talking about the death of the laptop as we increasingly turn to smart phones and tablets...Last year, Sony and Samsung pulled out of the Laptop market, both announcing they would stop making portable computers. That news arrived against a backdrop that has seen Notebook sales plummet by a quarter in 3 three years. Gartner said, "The laptop had been rejected and replaced by the tablet" blah I would like to see a Gartner Research guy write a 10,000 word report on his iPad.

I believe that Laptop sales will start to increase, Apple keeps innovating and making their range better, the Air is a beautiful machine... I admit, there are cool hybrids out there, the Lenovo Yoga, the Surface Pro gets better all the time. But hey, both machines are basically Tablets with keyboards, in fact the Surface is actually a Laptop with a full MS operating system.

Nonetheless, there is a time when you need to work on the move, the only sensible option is the laptop. Tablets still struggle to run multiple apps concurrently and that’s what kills the tablet for me, keyboard or no keyboard. They are devices for the consumption of data, not creation. I still struggle to understand how many organisations mobility programs only encompass Smart Phones and Tablets. Maybe the issue is mobility has been driven by vendors and consultants who have grown up from Mobile Device Management space? A space that is commoditised and is struggling to innovate.

So what is the future for Laptops? If we look to the enterprise, almost every CIO used to carry the size of their desktop/laptop estate like a trophy, now its a burden they need to dump, and fast. Over the next 5 - 10 years, many if not all organisations have a vision to no longer supply IT equipment to their employees. Long term strategies are to move applications to web-based software and then IT can really become device agnostic. Access your work, your apps from anything, anywhere and guess what, you need fraction of the power to do so. Look at the Toshiba Cloud Book a £200 laptop optimised for life in the cloud. The Chromebook, hugely popular cheap as chips operating system free notebook. In the end the reason Sony and Samsung got out of the market, was not because the laptop is not fit for purpose but simply because the trend is seeing them become ever cheaper.

In the future it will be the end user that makes the choice on the device they will use for their home life and work life. The laptop has a very positive future in the work place....