Hybrid Working: Could This Spell The End Of The Traditional Desktop PC?

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Do you recall day one of your new job?  A day filled with firsts, from navigating the new office to learning the names of your co-workers. Now imagine you’re starting a new job remotely, this has been a reality for many of us over the last few years.

Working from home isn’t a new phenomenon, many assume that the recent pandemic is the basis for executing the hybrid working, but these models have been on an upward curve in multiple industries for years now.

However, as a result of the pandemic there has been an increased shift from remote working to a more hybrid model as offices reopen.

In order to work in a hybrid model, employees need portable devices that can easily be transported back and forth from home to the office.  What does this mean for desktop PCs? According to Statista Desktop PC penetration in the UK has been on a steady decline since 2009, but the pandemic in 2020 only helped accelerate this, and now only 24% of households own a desktop PC.

Some industry experts have declared that the PC is finished. “Of course, we’re in a very post-PC world.” — Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s former chief software architect proclaimed in an interview at the annual GeekWire Summit.

There has been a large increase in mobile computing, particularly laptops, tablets and, smart phones. If we explore the laptop penetration in the UK results from 2009 it has steadily increased from 47% to 76% in 2021. Laptop computing has come a long way during this time, now with increased power, battery life, portability, and display quality.

As a result of these advances, laptops have become the preferred option for consumers, especially with the advent of cloud computing, allowing us to work from anywhere as we no longer need to rely on local storage to access files and systems.

This is a good question, and it will really depend on what you plan to use the PC for. I don’t quite think we are quite at a place to ditch the desktop PC all together, at least not just yet. Despite the advancements in portable devices, they are not yet capable of replacing the power and abilities of a traditional PC, especially for the extreme demands of tasks such as data science, game engineering, and video editing.

So we may be seeing a high demand for laptops due to increasing work from home and hybrid demands, but desktops are still the most powerful when it comes to anything requiring high processing power. In a few years’ time, the advancements within portable devices may be even more significant, and they may be in a better position to replace traditional PCs, who knows what the future holds.