The necessity of PCs is witnessing a decline in Japan as their sales figures have been going down in the last five quarters as smartphones are fast substituting them.
Japan has been registering a continuous decline in PC sales for the past five successive quarters, since April 2006 till June 2007. Desktop computer sales went down by 4.8% and laptops by 3.1%, during the second quarter of 2007. A research conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that this downhill trend has not yet taken a break, as per the news published by AHN.
IDC has found that over half of the people in Japan have switched over to their smartphones for sending e-mails and browsing the web. Smartphones have integrated themselves with applications and utilities that can now substitute a personal computer.
The role of PCs is gradually diminishing in Japanese households. Earlier, it had a strong monopoly due to its fast processing power. But today, it has been taken over by smart-phones, which are more or less pocket-size computers. They have sophisticated Internet-based game consoles, digital video recorders and terabytes of memory space.
Millions of smartphone users now download music straight into their mobiles, while others do online shopping with their handsets, besides playing games. Onboard digital cameras now connect directly, and some even wirelessly, to printers and HDTVs (High Definition Television) for viewing photos. This completely does away with the PC. Movies too can be downloaded straight to the TVs.
Designer gadgets and appealing models of handsets have become a status symbol in Japan. Besides, the tech-savvy generation wants to take its devices wherever they go, unlike the static PCs. Therefore, recent desktop PCs have been given the looks of a colorful art object of or audio-visual equipment.
As per a Senior Research Analyst at RNCOS, “The Japanese PC market is on a decline with every passing day. The availability of easy and cheap alternatives is relegating the PC industry in Japan. The telecom sector, however, doesn’t need to worry about this trend because the alternative devices sector will cushion the loss in PC market. Declining laptop sales is a real trouble for manufacturers as they will have to make smaller-size laptops and have to put-in technologies that gadgets and mobile handsets possess.”
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