Don’t ya just love it when some big name in the industry makes a massively sweeping statement, about how the whole market will change blah di blah di blah? And then they proceed to tell you how the market will change and everybody goes “er, what?” and we all carry on with our normal day. And it gets even more amusing when it’s somebody like Google, and the sweeping statement is about as sweeping as a 39-foot wide broom. According to The Register, head of Google Europe John Herlihy has gone on record, saying that the mobile phone will make the desktop PC completely irrelevant. Like, totally irrelevant. In three years.
In his own words, “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”
His comments echo what Eric Schmidt said at the Mobile World Congress, in that mobile is now Google’s primary focus. However, Herlihy’s gone a few steps further, saying that desktop PCs will actually be irrelevant in three years time. To which I say, “Pull the other one, it hath got bells on!”
Y’see, no matter how ubiquitous mobile phone are (and they are, properly ubiquitous), there are just some things a mobile phone can’t do very well. Like full screen, uber-high-end gaming, such as the likes of Crysis. And I know from experience; trying to edit this blog on my mobile phone’s screen was, frankly, a massive pain in the botty. Now, yes, it would probably be easier on something like the HTC HD2, with its 4.3 inch screen, or the Nexus One, but they still don’t even come close to the 19 inch widescreen monitor I’m using.
So, no. The desktop PC won’t become irrelevant. Be honest, can you really see it happening? But hey, let’s not focus on that part of his speech, when the best bit’s still to come, in the shape of his next quote, that shows just how fundamentally he’s misunderstood Roman military practice (look, these are the kind of things I find funny, ok?).
“Here’s an analogy – the Roman legions used to send out scouts in different directions. If a scout didn’t return, the army didn’t head in that direction. We seek feedback at every opportunity on something – we either kill it, adjust it or redeploy resources.”
Well, actually, that’s not right. If a scout didn’t return from a region, they’d send an enormous garrison to go and stick lots of pointy things in the people who’d stopped the scout returning, then set fire to all the houses, and annex the whole country, hail Caesar, welease bwian, etc etc…
So, essentially what I’m saying is, yes, the Nexus One is a pretty damn nice phone, but let’s not go overboard, eh?
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