Bill Gates sees end of ‘device categories’ as PCs, phones merge
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates thinks the feature and functionality gap between PCs and mobile devices will close. He predicts the distinction between personal computers, smart phones and other intelligent appliances will vanish, and that they will be replaced by a common platform on which users can communicate, work and play games.
In a webcast of his keynote speech at the at the opening of Microsoft’s annual CEO Summit at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus Gates said, “I tend to believe that the phone will move up and the PC will move down and there won’t be any special device categories, because the power of being able to run any applications, whether it’s media, reading, navigation, is very strong.”
Gates noted that the breakthroughs in transistor technology have paved the way for the development of small PCs, while the newest generation of smart phones feature larger screens and enough internal processing power to play full motion video.
To make his point, Gates demonstrated a palmtop device powerful enough to run a full-blown version of Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system.
“You’ll have the PC with a phone peripheral and then you’ll have your mobile phone. And the mobile phone and that PC will be working together in a rich way,” he said.
Gates said device convergence has profound implications for professionals in all fields. “In this new world of work you can work at home, you can work on the road, and if you have a company with many locations, the overhead, the problems that that creates, the need for trips and things is reduced by using the technology in the right way.”
Microsoft is in itself taking advantage of such technologies internally to improve efficiency and cut costs, he added.
Microsoft has recognized the desire among consumers and businesses for mobile computing devices that give low-end PCs a run for its money.
In February, the company released its version 6 Windows Mobile smart phone operating system, which allows users to run a number of Microsoft Office applications that were previously only available on a desktop or laptop.
However, the software itself revealed that the company, in its quest to deliver mobile computing with PC power, still needs a lot of work. For one thing, there have been criticisms that Windows Mobile 6 doesn’t synchronize properly with computers running Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system.
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