30 years of personal computer market share figures

While pondering over the debate on 100$ computer - views against by Intel and a set of counter arguments, courtesy of James Seng, came across this excellent article on the recapping the thirty year of personal computers. The story of the personal computer is a fascinating tale, it is ever exciting to read. As Jeremy points out, When you step back and look at the big picture, the overall dominance of the PC becomes clear. In fact it wasn't until 1986 that the PC platform first surpassed 50% market share and that was more than a decade after the first personal computer was sold. Bill Gates then recalled that many mainframe computers had spawned work-alike clones in the past. It was this foresight that enabled him to get IBM to agree to a contract whereby Microsoft could license MS-DOS to third parties. IBM, thinking in mainframe timelines and assuming that clones would be perpetually years behind the originals, thought nothing of this stipulation. They were only concerned with getting the lowest possible flat rate for MS-DOS (which they mistakenly called PC-DOS) in the first place. A combination of extreme foresight and even better luck enabled Microsoft's rise to dominance along with the PC platform. A handful of geeks and enthusiasts turned that dream into reality, and today personal computers are everywhere. Over 173 million computers were sold in 2004, and the figures are expected to continue to rise, as falling prices enable people all over the world to enjoy the benefits of personal computing. A well researched and compiled article - must read for all those tracking, using and working on emerging technologies. Don't miss the lovely chart om market shares of various vendors - in fact it is a good indicator of how the technology itself has evolved and likely to shape up in future.

Bruce Perens' Forecasts for 2006

Bruce Perens makes a set of forecast for 2006. With increase interest in opensource showing up and with developments like this taking place - it is certainy worth watching what Bruce perens has to say - with my comments added.

1. Java begins its decline as an Enterprise Platform : As he sees it,Java falls flat in one critical area: time-to market. Upstart web platforms like Ruby on Rails have shown that you can use your development time – resulting in scalabilty - add cheap hardware instead of expensive time. (My View : Nope .. I do not see an easy switch from Java to a new platform happening in 2006 in the enterprise space - switching costs and associated change management could be minboggling)
2. Native Linux APIs gain ground as a Cellular Applications Platform
Java's also the Cell phone industry's answer to portability, but not to performance. The advent of Linux and Open Source GUIs in feature phones, and standardization projects like those run by OSDL and Free Standards Group, will begin to be noted in 2006 (My view : I do not see this to happen wholesome but in a very limited way could happen)
3. Cellular Carriers are Just Carriers : Like ISP’s tried in the early days to provide content and failed ,cellular carriers dream of value-added content, served through feature phones, as a revenue enhancer may also meet the same fate. Content will always come from content experts/general media. (My view : Fully agree)
4. Trouble ahead for PHP :PHP has become the BASIC of web application design, used primarily by designers without too much computer science background. The platform hasn't taken well to multiprocessing, and is doing poorly enough from a security standpoint While organizations invested in PHP will band-aid their existing code, new projects will move to other platforms, with designers more cognizant of both software engineering and application security. (My view : Partially agree).

Read his full post to look at his other predictions.

Google - Gtalk API

The pace at which things move in the online world is indeed amazing.Google has just released a set of components called Libjingle that allow third party applications to interact with Google Talk. The components, which include some source code, are being released under a very liberal berkely style license allowing for free incorporation into commercial and non-commercial software. Google says in its API site that this is released as part of its ongoing commitment to promoting consumer choice and interoperability in Internet-based real-time-communications. This can be freely incorporate into software and distributed without any restrictions. There are several general purpose components in the library such as the P2P stack which can be used to build a variety of communication and collaboration applications. A summary of the individual components of the library reads like this:
* base - Low-level portable utility functions.
* p2p - The p2p stack, including base p2p functionality and client hooks into XMPP.
* session - Phone call signaling.
* third_party - Non-Google components required for some functionality.
* xmllite - XML parser.
* xmpp - XMPP engine.
Google is now training its guns at Skype,forcing them to release their API’s. While Skype clerly provides for integration with the Skype client, Google has gone far beyond this, allowing integration with the Google Talk’s VOIP network. Google Google's Philosophy as seen here needs commendation : it says that you should have a choice in how you communicate with your friends, and it’s committed to upholding this idea of user choice for Google Talk. Today, with instant communications, you can't talk to your contacts or buddies in one service while using another service and makes an open statement that it wants to work with other willing service providers to enable their users to communicate directly with Google Talk users. Good move- probably as I see it next to google search and Gmail this may have the maximum number of profiled community members. Good move- am an instant convert to using GoogleTalk.