Apple

[Vanraw]

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And speaking of which, macs are going gangbusters, while PCs are in decline. When I heard the VP of my group talking about "the post PC era" at an all hands recently, I knew we were in for a sea change.

Just to be clear, when most marketing dev teams talk about "post PC" era today they are talking about personnel computers being replaced with things like smart phones, and such. PC's being any desktop / laptop like device, MAC or Windows device.

There is more power in my android then a PC 5 to 10 years ago, and the trend will continue. Also cloud computing plays into this since the idea is that anything that needs a HD will be on the cloud. So things like Word, and excel etc, will be pay to use on the cloud.

I do think this is a viable trend. In fact the trend seems to be to have a docking station in your office, and you just plug your "phone" into it and you have a full monitor / key board etc.

I agree that Apple has a good leg up in this space, but I can tell you from practical personal usage, the iPhone / iPad, as well as the Android have a long way to go in the enterprise space. Blackberry, (though a shrinking market) is the only company that "gets" the enterprise right now. But they dont get the toy. And people, executives, are buying toy's.

I can sit on my couch and do 100% of my job with the right blackberry, and a BES implemented in the enterprise along with the VOIP service my company sells. Hell no one can even tell im on my couch, as opposed to in teh office. I have a tried the iphone and now am using a droid 2 /w keyboard, using a enterprise server application called "Good" that is trying to compete with Black Berry BES. Its not even close. Android and iphone dont get enterprise yet. If I had to rank who gets it, it would be in this order.

Blackberry
Microsoft
Android
Apple

The main reason Apple is last is because they dont get the need for a keyboard / swipe technology. And they are way behind in voice recognition. Android's voice recognition is impressive.

I agree that there are some strong usage markets for the "Pad" market in business with custom software. Hospitals, insurance claims, to name a few. But I would say from an over all sale's perspective this would be a low minority right now, compared to the couch browser. Dont get me wrong, its a great home / residential device, but apple doesnt have the enterprise yet. Perhaps they dont want it.

As for the "next big thing". My vote will be flexible electronic paper (ie Minority report). Companies were making some serious strides in this space a couple years ago.