Tablets and smartphones are more popular than ever, but PCs will continue to dominate how we use the internet and work. That's according to a new report by analysts at Deloitte, which examines the top technology trends for 2013.
The firm estimates there will be over 1.6 billion PCs and laptops in use this year, up from 1.4 billion in 2010, with a small growth in the number of units sold year-on-year. Some 350 million PCs were sold in 2010, rising to 353 million in 2011, with the figure for 2012 expected to be 355 million.
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Meanwhile, sals of mobile devices have seen rapid growth, and are expected to reach over one billion this year. Deloitte expects the installed base of tablets to reach a quarter of a billion during 2013. The number of smartphones, which are regularly used to access online data, is predicted to reach 1.5 billion.
Despite the boom in mobile devices, over 80 per cent of internet traffic still comes from desktop and laptop computers, which account for more than 70 per cent of time spent using computing devices. Time at work accounts for a large proportion of this figure, but even at home, PCs are likely to be used to access the web more than 50 per cent of the time.
Deloitte said most people still favour using desktops and laptops because they have larger screens, large keyboards and simple-to-use mice or trackpads for navigation, which makes them particularly suitable for creating content such as spreadsheets or Word documents.
"For most people, the PC will continue to be the primary computing device. We are not in a ‘post-PC era', we are in the era of ‘PC Plus'," said Jolyon Barker, global lead for Deloitte's technology, media and telecommunications division.
The report will be welcomed by those PC users who believe the death of the desktop has been greatly exaggerated.
