Why a bit of fast talking could save the PC from disaster

Grim news this week for PC makers, yet again, as they've been warned to fix their business model or just quit instead. It's not a huge surprise; first smartphones and then tablets have done away with the need for a PC to carry out many (perhaps even most) basic computing tasks - like email or web browsing. And the PC makers were far, far too slow to respond to the threat to their market, only recently finally coming up with the two-in-one devices and hybrid tablet-PC creations which have provided a certain amount of interest from consumers and businesses. Now as the chart below shows there's still a lot of PCs out there - and there will continue to be, too. But rather than being something that might get upgraded every three years, PC replacement cycles are slowing as many applications now run in the cloud, which makes local processing power less relevant.