Are We in a Post-PC Era?

"Is the centre of gravity in the computing world shifting away from the personal computer? In other words the issue that lies at the heart of the motion we will be debating in the days ahead. The topic continues to generate plenty of heated discussion within the innovation industry and it has important repercussions for the world beyond it." These are the moderator's opening remarks on October 25th.

The real thing they got wrong

The real thing they got wrong, to my way of thinking, was the religious conviction that any single "best device" would dominate computing. The exact in contrast has happened. Diversity has exploded. IT and employees alike have an amazing array of choices today. As devices got thinner, lighter and cheaper, people did not switch -- they bought more. Two or three years ago, the average corporate employee used only one PC for 90% of their work; today, they use an average of three different devices for work every day, many of which are their own personal consumer devices.

While the notion that the PC is dying is wildly overstated, the fact that its relevance is changing is indisputable. For most of the past 20 years, the PC was the centre of our digital universe. Everything we did in computing as users revolved around a PC. It was where our data were stored. It defined what apps we ran and how we used them. In many instances, it as well defined where we worked. As we look around us today, it is hard to argue that the PC will continue to hold that same level of universal centrality going forward. There are simply too many choices. Innovation innovations have opened a floodgate of options, and a new generation of users "born digital" is unlikely to feel the same allegiance to any single form factor.

Threat to companies like Microsoft

I don't believe that vision is a threat to companies like Microsoft. To tell the truth, they are at the forefront of many of the innovations making the cloud era possible ... It is a threat only to vendors who stubbornly cling to a single form factor as the centre of the computing world, and try to restrict and limit user choice.

Opening Statement: "This is not the post-PC era. It is the PC-plus era in which a world of devices, connected via "fat pipes" to cloud Internet services, are delivering amazing new experiences."

The time we used to spend on our PCs communicating

Smartphones may be capturing some of the time we used to spend on our PCs communicating and collaborating. iPads and other tablet-like devices may be preferred for certain forms of content consumption, however when we need to be productive, when we need to create value, when we need to crunch numbers, create a sales pitch, edit a movie or develop a new script, we all in all turn to our tool of choice -- the PC.

I don't think it is too much of a stretch to suggest that the vast majority of content consumed on a tablet, phone or set-top box was created or edited on a PC. There are whole categories of work -- architecture, industrial design, finance, scientific discovery, mapping, government -- where there is no potential of doing work in a true post-PC era.

Few prominent PC stocks

Investing ideasHere a few prominent PC stocks, all major players henceforth of the PC and cloud computing. Do you think these names are prepared for whatever lies ahead?

1. Dell : Market cap of $27.60B. Provides integrated innovation solutions in the information innovation industry worldwide. Share price as of 11/02 at $15.

2. Hewlett-Packard : Market cap of $50.95B. Offers various products, technologies, software, solutions, and services to individual consumers and small- and medium-sized businesses, as so then as to the government, health, and education sectors worldwide. Share price as of 11/02 at $25.88. Might be undervalued at current levels, with a PEG ratio at 0.79, and P/FCF ratio at 6.2. The stock has had a good month, gaining 15.5%.

3. Intel : Market cap of $125.50B. Engages in the design, manufacture, and sale of integrated circuits for computing and communications industries worldwide. Share price as of 11/02 at $23.82. Offers a good dividend, and appears to have good liquidity to back it up--dividend yield at 3.51%, current ratio at 2.24, and quick ratio at 1.91. The stock has had a good month, gaining 15.91%.

4. Marvell Innovation : Market cap of $8.19B. Designs, develops, and markets analog, mixed-signal, digital signal processing, and embedded and stand-alone ARM-based microprocessor integrated circuits. Share price as of 11/02 at $13.57. Might be undervalued at current levels, with a PEG ratio at 0.65, and P/FCF ratio at 8.68. The stock has lost 31.13% over the last year.

5. NVIDIA : Market cap of $8.49B. Provides visual computing, high performance computing, and mobile computing solutions that generate interactive graphics on various devices ranging from tablets and smart phones to notebooks and workstations. Share price as of 11/02 at $13.77. The stock has had a good month, gaining 19.05%.

6. Seagate Innovation : Market cap of $6.82B. Designs, manufactures, markets, and sells hard disk drives for the enterprise, client compute, and client non-compute market applications in the United States and internationally. Share price as of 11/02 at $16.84. This is a risky stock in other words significantly more volatile than the overall market. Offers a good dividend, and appears to have good liquidity to back it up--dividend yield at 4.43%, current ratio at 1.97, and quick ratio at 1.7. The stock has had a good month, gaining 71.23%.