According to Gartner, tablets and hand held internet enabled devices will slash the expected PC sales from 15.9% to only 10.5% in 2011 and only about 13% higher in 2012 than in 2011.

Notebooks used to be the mobile device of choice. However, the popularity of tablets and the more sophisticated smart phones has gobbled up a big share of the new PC market. They also expect most people to keep their PCs but not replace them with new ones opting for the tablets instead. For the time being most business will continue to buy PCs.

However Gartner, senior research analyst, Raphael Vasquez said, “Even in the professional market, media tablets are being considered as PC substitutes, likely at least delaying some PC replacements. Mobile PC growth has also been hampered by the devices simply not being mobile enough, according to Gartner.

Today’s notebooks are not substantially lighter than earlier versions, and their limited battery life puts them at a disadvantage in the current age of all-day connectivity. These limitations have become all the more apparent with the rapid spread of social networking, which thrives on constant and immediate connections”

Are PCs going to become extinct any time soon? I doubt it but they will continue to become a smaller and smaller share of the computing market because wireless mobility is what most people want today.

20 years ago, Microsoft developed something called Pen Computing which was the first tablet. So why are they so far behind Apple? They seem to only want a machine that can do everything which requires real speed and a powerful battery. Both of which, mean a heavy machine. If nothing else, the iPad proved that consumers will accept limitations if the device is light weight.

Windows 7 is currently being deployed on tablets manufactured by Motion, TabletKiosk, Tangent and Panasonic. Windows Embedded Compact 7, just released to OEMs for inclusion on tablets today could let Microsoft catch up with the tablet competition but, Microsoft would lose those higher Windows desktop OS revenues if they actually do that.

Microsoft contends that tablet sales will be secondary to PCs rather than a replacement purchase. With the current tablet limitations, I tend to agree with Microsoft. But, as soon as the tablets can run the more resource hungry applications or those apps are moved to the cloud, I expect the PC will die a very slow and long drawn out death, just like the floppy disk recently did.