For a while now we have heard that the end is nigh for the humble desktop. The belief that tablets, such as the iPad would take over have been around ever since Apple started selling more iPads than Macs in 2011. At first glance headlines about Sony’s withdrawal from the PC market and HP not performing as well all lend credibility to the argument.

However, as I write this I am on a PC, in an office of PCs and Macs. Yes, iPads are around and we all have smart phones, but when it comes to doing work it is my PC that I turn to.  Our office is not alone. When we visit clients we are always met by groups of people working hard at a desktop. We have yet to walk into an office where everybody is on a tablet. At the moment it just isn’t happening.

There is no doubting that tablets are an important part of the mix. Even now, when we are on the 5^th generation iPad, we still utilise them for any exhibitions we attend. They still have a wow factor about them. However, our two best selling machines are the HP ProDesk 400 and the 27” iMac. Both are desktop solutions and both are used as workhorses by the organisations that lease them.

So how do we account for the dip in PC sales? Is it that we are just finding room for a tablet solution? When tablets first hit the scene they were a brand new product, an innovation. People wanted to purchase them as they filled a void and were attractive products. However, it you look at the more established mobile phone market you will see that people buying a smartphone not to replace a PC or tablet but to simply replace a phone. So in years to come will people buy more tablets simply to replace their existing ones?

So as the market stabilises, having accommodated the tablet form, could it be that we have just witnessed a simple readdressing and are left with a market place whereby PC, tablets and Macs, all sit with one another. None of them are here to replace the other, simply to co-exist besides one another.

Until the tablet is able to make our everyday business tasks as easy to complete as there are on a PC or Mac, then we believe they are destined to be an important part of the mix but they will not replace them.  However, they will not replace the humble PC