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The Post-PC era is a market trend observed during the late 2000s and early 2010s involving a decline in the sales of personal computers in favor of post-PC devices; which include mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers as well as other mobile computers such as wearable and ubiquotous ones. These devices emphasize portability and connectivity, including the use of cloud-based services, more focused "apps" to perform tasks, and the ability to synchronize information between multiple devices seamlessly. The term was first coined by MIT scientist David D. Clark. While both Microsoft and Apple's former CEO's Bill Gates and Steve Jobs also predicted a shift towards mobile devices as the primary method of computing, as a complement to the PC, Jobs popularized the term "post-PC" in 2007 (the launch of the first iPhone), and in 2011 launched iCloud, a service enabling Apple's product line to synchronize data with PCs through cloud services, freeing their iOS devices from dependency on a PC. Towards the middle of the 2010s, media sources began to question the existence of the post-PC era, at least as conventionally defined.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Why the Much-Hyped Post-PC Era Never Arrived )〕 == History == The term "post PC" was first used by David D. Clark in 1999; considering the future of computing to be "inevitably heterogeneous" and a "network full of services". Clark described a world where "everything" would be able to connect to the internet (including watches and toasters), computing would primarily be done through information appliances, and data would be stored by centralized hosting services instead of on physical disks. In a 1999 op-ed piece for ''Newsweek'', Microsoft's CEO Bill Gates predicted a landscape he dubbed "PC Plus", where personal computers would be used alongside devices which would seamlessly synchronize data (such as calendar events, files, e-mails, etc.) from a PC for easier accessibility from where a user would need it.〔 At Macworld Expo in 2001, not long after the dot-com bubble burst and amidst industry-wide angst over the future of the PC, Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs announced a strategy seeing a PC (specifically, the Macintosh) serving as a "digital hub" for future mobile devices (such as its iPod MP3 player). Jobs stated that "We don't think the PC is dying at all. We don't think the PC is moving from the center at all. We think it's evolving. Just like it has since it was invented in 1975 and '76." At an interview alongside Bill Gates at the 5th All Things Digital conference in 2007, Steve Jobs further described a concept similar to Gates' "PC Plus" known as a "post-PC device"; "a category of devices that aren't as general purpose, that are really more focused on specific functions, whether they're phones or iPods or Zunes or what have you. And I think that category of devices is going to continue to be very innovative and we're going to see lots of them". Jobs felt that despite these developments, PCs would "continue to be with us and morph with us, whether it's a tablet or a notebook or, you know, a big curved desktop that you have at your house or whatever it might be." Gates suggested the prevalence of multiple form factors for such devices, including full-sized tablets, small phones, and 10-foot experiences for the living room. In June 2010, at the D8 conference, while being interviewed by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, Jobs compared tablets and PCs to cars and trucks, saying "(are ) still going to be around. They’re still going to have a lot of value. But they’re going to be used by like one out of ''x'' people.” while predicting that the vast majority of people will eventually use tablets as a primary computing device, analogous to the majority of people who drive cars. Directly conflicting Apple's previous "digital hub" strategy centered around the Macintosh PC, Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's iCloud platform in 2011, which provides cloud storage for data that can be automatically synced between iOS products and PCs. iOS 5, released concurrently with iCloud, also removed the platform's dependency on a PC for first-time setup, syncing, and software updates. Jobs explained that iCloud would replace the PC as the "hub" for a user's devices with online serversall of a user's devices, including a PC, would be able to automatically synchronize and access media and other files between platforms. Apple's current CEO Tim Cook continued to elaborate on the concept that a PC would no longer have to be the center of one's digital life, considering them to be a "device" on the same level as any portable device that a particular user owns. Cook also explained that mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones would be "more portable, more personal and dramatically easier to use than any PC has ever been".〔〔 Technologically, Jason Perlow compared post-PC devices to the centralized mainframe-based computer systems of 1970sbut enhanced by the use of cloud computing to provide a more flexible and heterogeneous infrastructure for online services to run on, and the use of desktop virtualization to serve PC-only applications when needed as businesses shift towards apps. Matt Baxter-Reynolds felt that the main selling point of post-PC devices are their lack of functionality; believing that their more simplistic and secure design make them less intimidating to use for consumers in comparison to a traditional PC, their lack of keyboard (unlike laptops) contribute to better portability, and also noted their emphasis on connectivity as well. In 2014, Sony had sold off its PC division and VAIO brand〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Sayonara, VAIO: Sony sells off PC business to focus on mobile )〕 leading many to speculate the PC market was dying, along with a drop in sales.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=No, Really, the PC Is Dying and It's Not Coming Back )〕 However, the PC market did experience some periods of growth throughout the 2010s as well, leading many to claim the exact opposite. PC gaming grew 8% in 2012 alone and is expected to continue growing. In the second quarter of 2014, PC sales began to rise again. Growth of the PC compatible market was driven by strong sales of portable PCs in 2014〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=DailyTech - IDC: 2014 Sales Show PC Isn't Dead, But Desktop May be Dying )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Post-PC era」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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