PC Market and Certifications in 2014 and beyond

There has been a tectonic shift in the PC industry.

More and more people are buying smart phones and tablets, and PC sales are plummeting. How will this affect the PC Industry as a whole, and will certifications either change or become obsolete in this new landscape?

Some current news on the matter:

Tech industry sales forecast uneven for 2014 | The Journal News | lohud.com | lohud.com

New U.S. sales figures show the changing face of PC and tablet markets in 2013 | ZDNet

LG ‘to exit traditional PC market’ amid declining sales, profit squeeze

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-01-02/news/45799518_1_hp-pc-sales-hewlett-Packard

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Comments

petedude

Of course, this means fewer and fewer mom 'n' pop standalone PC stores, but that trend was already in progress anyway.

This may mean ultimately fewer "PC Deployment Technician" types of roles but a number of those will be replaced by either tablet deployment roles, tablet support roles or tablet programming roles.

WafflesAndRootbeer

Until they have a dock that turns a tablet or smartphone into a fully-functional desktop, tablet and smartphone sales won't mean much of anything.

wgroom

Speed of PCs has increased to a point the operator cannot enter, interpret, and process data faster than PC can process. There is a plateau where more speed does not equal better performance. Tablets and phones allow the easy access to information ALMOST anywhere. Lighter, longer battery life, easier to use than a full blown laptop, but no where near as powerful.

For me a good solution is a powerful laptop / PC running Logmein, allowing connection from a tablet wherever. Coupled with a cell phone as an access point, the possibilities are superb for a quick connection, without the need to carry cables and power supplies, let alone a fully loaded backpack. Today it is all about convenience and battery life.

linuxlover

The future definitely lies within handheld devices and cloud services.

PCs are already outdated and will completely vanish in the future years and I can't wait really. Even today tablets are powerful enough to complete tasks that majority of PC users perform, that is email/news/social/docs. For the rest of us who need more power, PCs will transform into Workstations. The production of PCs is already declining due to the decreasing sales and I assume the prices would go up for such workstations, but they will be much better quality to compensate the price with.

As for the cloud, everything is moving to server-side because it's simply more convenient. Adobe and Microsoft already offer their most popular products in the cloud. OnLive is a perfect example of the convenience I'm talking about. These days it's not even uncommon for web hosting companies to offer routing and load balancing as a service. Everything is simply moving to the cloud which goes well together with the PC crash, because with such services you will be able to perform any task or a job with your tablet or a phone device and there won't be any need to have all these crazy components at home.

Technologies to learn if you want to secure a job in the future:
- Android (C++, Java)
- IaaS (CISCO, Amazon, RedHat)

What I'm worried about is the fact that with automation the need for personnel also decreases. I read bout Microsoft having one admin per 1000 - 2000 servers. I also noticed an increase of remote positions in technical support and system administration in the web hosting industry. These jobs are mostly taken by third world residents, not entirely but mostly. I don't know what future brings for us here, but I know there won't be enough jobs for everybody.

WafflesAndRootbeer

The first wave of Android desktops are on display at CES. Even though we've had a few dabbles over the last year, this year represents some serious attempts at pushing Android on the desktop, especially with high-resolution displays. The prices are too high for Enterprise use but the designs are looking just about right.

WafflesAndRootbeer

WafflesAndRootbeer wrote: »

Until they have a dock that turns a tablet or smartphone into a fully-functional desktop, tablet and smartphone sales won't mean much of anything.

Apparently I can control the universe with my statements on TechExams because they just laid out the groundwork for that at CES today with DockPort.

wgroom

A fast processor coupled to minimum memory and a slow HDD degrades performance. Couple a fast CPU with 16gb RAM and a SS-HDD and you have a screaming machine. No complaints heard from those users. YMMV.

Params7

"The Cloud" is going to get mainstream levels of big in small/medium businesses by next 5 years. People are going to become experts in connecting via RDP from their tablets and working anywhere.

MSP-IT

Params7 wrote: »

"The Cloud" is going to get mainstream levels of big in small/medium businesses by next 5 years. People are going to become experts in connecting via RDP from their tablets and working anywhere.

This. Though I'm surprised this hasn't caught on quicker than it has. I work in a very large corporation and it has been nearly impossible to get a basic desktop VM allocated.

Anonymouse

phoeneous wrote: »

Disagree when you factor in overall speed of network. Otherwise, why would users complain about stuff being "slow"?

End users like to complain when their youtube or facebook doesn't load fast enough.