Analyst firm Gartner Dataquest argues that sales of PCs have not recovered to their former levels because companies are now holding on to old machines for longer.
Historically, most enterprises have replaced stock on a three-year cycle. But nowadays many three-year-old PCs can still run all the required business applications, so firms see no need to upgrade. In addition, the Internet, intranets and extranets have changed the way information is managed. High-speed client connectivity is more important than processor speed.
That means more and more emphasis is being placed on what happens at the server end of the network, and a good deal is about to happen there. Intel's 64bit Itanium still has some way to go before it is the dominant processor for servers - but the likelihood of it happening in, say, three years is high. Just look at what is coming down the line.
You will have read about NEC's TX7 system with up to 32 Itaniums - not being sold as a business system in Europe, it is true. Now IBM has announced it is working on an expanded version of the xSeries 440 that can run up to 32 chips - Xeons at first, but with Itaniums planned in future. HP clearly aims to take things further, with plans for an Itanium-based server that will scale from eight to 64 processors, with 128 processors as a long-term target.
Such servers will not appear until next year at the earliest, and there are serious doubts about there being any operating system except proprietary versions of Unix capable of really exploiting them for the next year or two. Nonetheless, the trend is clear: powerful servers with industry-standard processors that will become close to commodity off-the-shelf items. With such power readily available and scalable at the server end, who needs high-powered clients, especially at the desktop?
Where desktop systems are needed, then existing PCs will be good enough thin clients to last a long while yet. But as Doug Busch, joint chief information officer at Intel, pointed out recently, what staff need now are laptop systems.
Busch has found that the benefits of employees having laptops far outweigh the extra up-front costs involved, so much so that the laptop/desktop ratio already stands at 65:35 at Intel. Fit them all up for a virtual private network, give them all WiFi wireless connectivity and throw in GPRS mobile phone connections, and staff can work where and when they need to.
This overcomes what Busch calls the loss of critical minutes - time wasted when people cannot get to their desktop machines to work. Intel staff said they gain about 1.5 hours of working time each day by using readily connectable laptops.
Busch's team is currently working to improve the integration and management of PDAs used by staff. About half the handhelds used by Intel's employees are paid for by the company; the remainder are owned by employees themselves.
Given the requirements of firms and employees, perhaps the PC will in future be replaced by a hybrid device - a cross between laptop and PDA. In the meantime, sales of PCs are unlikely to pick up significantly.
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