Desktop giants forced to share space with growing array of computing devices.
A scan of recent technology headlines could convince you that the future belongs to the letter A: Apple and Android. But a couple of names further down the alphabet - Intel and Microsoft - aren't about to shuffle off, even if the spotlight has shifted.
Chip-maker Intel and software company Microsoft remain the superpowers of desktop and notebook computing. Their problem is that desktops - and inevitably, notebooks - are losing ground to smartphones and touch-screen devices such as Apple's iPad.
Sales numbers may not say so yet but sentiment certainly does. Ray Ozzie, who took over from Bill Gates as Microsoft's chief software architect in 2006, talks about the "dawn of a new day". That's the title of a 3400-word memo Ozzie sent to Microsoft executives last week as he left the company. He wrote that "connected devices beyond the PC will increasingly come in a breathtaking number of shapes and sizes, tuned for a broad variety of communications, creation and consumption tasks".
But the PC isn't done for just yet. Market-watcher IDC released Asia-Pacific figures a fortnight ago which showed that, excluding Japan, PC sales were up 14 per cent on a year ago in the three months to the end of September, to 28.7 million units.
Yet that was 2 per cent below forecast, prompting PC market analyst Amy Cheah to comment that devices such as the iPad were "distracting" consumers in mature markets, although not to the extent that they were eating greatly into PC sales.
Any suggestion of the PC's imminent death is exaggerated, according to Mark Rees, Microsoft New Zealand's head of technology. "It will have an important role to play for some time to come," he says, pointing out that there's no practical alternative when it comes to typing a news story, for instance.
But he agrees with Ozzie that PCs will increasingly have company.
"It's definitely changing from the desktop being the primary way to being just one of the ways we access services ... and we expect that to continue."
He has no hesitation in acknowledging that iPad-like devices will catch on. "The tablet is a really exciting space. The iPad ... is just the start of what will be a burgeoning new form factor."
If the buzz is centred on the iPad, and Google's Android operating system, which is used in a variety of tablets and smartphones, Rees doesn't accept that as a sign of Microsoft's impending irrelevance.
"Companies, especially technology companies, go through a kind of lifecycle when there might be a lot of coverage and hype around them, then that changes. We're no longer new news. Products change, new stuff appears."
It might be a blessing. For years Microsoft was in the headlines for the wrong reasons, as its monopolistic behaviour was being investigated. Media coverage of Apple's Steve Jobs' clumsy handling of the iPhone 4 reception issue and Google boss Eric Schmidt's repeated trivialising of privacy concerns is undoubtedly compulsory viewing at Microsoft headquarters.
But rather than reveal too much pleasure in his rivals' discomfort, Rees says the success that the likes of Apple and Google are having with products that compete with Windows is sparking innovation.
Microsoft, with a research-and-development budget reportedly close to US$10 billion ($13 billion), is focusing on the post-keyboard, post-mouse world that the iPad gives a glimpse of.
Today in the United States - and by Christmas in New Zealand - Microsoft is launching Kinect, a motion-sensor and voice-driven Xbox game controller.
"It's a great opportunity for games but I think the really interesting thing is what it could do for more mainstream computing," Rees says.
Could liberation be at hand for two-finger typists? "I think it's a logical path to follow for the technology in that device to lead to more natural interactions for computing."
Where does this leave Intel? The chip-maker's bread and butter is powering the desktops, notebooks and servers whose domination of computing is going to be challenged by tablets and smartphones.
However, Intel processors are conspicuously absent from the iPad, iPhone and most devices like them. Kate Burleigh, the company's Australia and New Zealand marketing manager, says Intel would like to have been anointed iPad and iPhone chip supplier.
But Apple chose a rival processor, the A4, in pursuit of longer battery life at the expense of performance.
But Intel sees the writing on the wall and, through acquisitions and product development efforts, it is attempting to stake a claim in the smartphone market.
With IDC predicting worldwide smartphone sales to go from 227 million this year to nearly 440 million in 2014, there's plenty at stake.
New Dawn
"We're moving toward a world of
1) cloud-based continuous services that connect us all and do our bidding, and
2) appliance-like connected devices enabling us to interact with those cloud-based services."
- Ray Ozzie's message to Microsoft
Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist
