What are we going to do about mobile?

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, 9 May 2017 at 04:39:33 UTC, Jerry wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 April 2017 at 05:24:07 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> That means this tidal wave of mobile swamping PCs is only 
>> going to get worse:
>>
>> https://twitter.com/lukew/status/842397687420923904
>>
>> D is currently built and optimized for that dying PC platform.
>>  There are only two devs working on mobile, Dan and me, I 
>> don't think anybody on the core team has even tried our work.
>
> "dying". Just cause there aren't a lot of new devices being 
> sold doesn't mean it is dying. There's the used market to 
> consider, and PCs have a long lifespan. I have a 7 year old 
> desktop that still runs perfectly fine and does all the tasks 
> and computing I need to be done. I'll probably be using it for 
> another few years, maybe when zen+ comes out or there's 
> actually a reason to buy a new computer. Even then I won't be 
> buying a prebuilt, not sure if those sales figures includes 
> sales of PC parts. Even though new PC sales are declining, GPU 
> sales are seeing a major increase in sales.

On the other hand, even if sales are doubling, that doesn't mean 
you aren't dying.  Consider Blackberry, whose sales rocketed up 
even after the iPhone was first introduced in 2007:

https://www.recode.net/2017/2/26/14742598/blackberry-sales-market-share-chart

Then, all of a sudden, people realized, "Why are we buying these 
old-fashioned keyboard smartphones?"  From 2006-2010 Blackberry 
sales went up 5X, doing really well but still lagging far behind 
the explosive growth of Android/iPhone, and now it is basically 
dead.  The mobile wave killed Blackberry, the previous smartphone 
leader in the US and many other countries.  Nokia was tops 
worldwide, also now dead.

That is similar to what is happening to PCs: a slow decline 
followed by a precipitious collapse, when people realize, "Why 
are we still buying these old-fashioned PCs when we can do 
_everything_ on our mobile devices now?"  When multi-window is 
practically ubiquituous on mobile, which it will be soon since it 
is baked into Android Nougat, that is what will happen.