While many might say the future is all about more computers everywhere, Japan is actually seeing its PC market shrink. Obviously computing power is increasingly hiding in other appliances these days (cf. on the road to ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence). As such, attention and value are shifting from sheer computing power of devices, to the way the services enabled by a network of different devices (e.g. smartphones, domestic appliances, …) are empowering people in their daily lives.

Three reasons are mentioned for the Japanese PC decline:

• PC’s offer less direct added value than other devices
• 50 percent of Japanese browse the web and email from their mobile phones
• Japanese do not really work from home

Keep in mind though that not only Japanese society and consumer behaviour is very different from US or European ones, also the whole mobile phone industry and usage is very different, which makes drawing parallels between the Japanese trend and our corner of the world tricky.

One can however see the evolution as a natural consequence of the way our notion of a computer and what it stands for is changing. Computing and the values it offers us through the services it provides, is ever the less connected to the notion of a humming box with a screen and a keyboard and mouse, and ever more with an interconnected, intelligent network of appliances and services (of which we only own part ourselves, cf. webapplications, -resources etc.).

Via Pasta & Vinegar

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 11:33 and is filed under business, future, technology, trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.