First of all, and for the part that concerns us, it is a question of defining what breakthrough innovations are. They are the ones that change the way a job is done, creating a new category of product that eventually replaces previous technology in use and over time. Over the past decades we have seen several examples, for example original LCDs looked worse than CRTs, but they take up less space and power less, digital cameras are not limited in the number of photos and we don’t have to take them to develop like those of the reel. No one has movie shelves anymore due to the fact that digital downloading and streaming is so much more convenient.
Understand what a disruptive innovation is
One of the things we need to consider is the concept of performance and how the average user ends up capturing it. It is nothing more than the ability to perform a specific task, as long as it is deficient, it will be necessary for it to be greater. Once the sweet spot is reached, every improvement over what is needed is seen as a luxury and interest begins to focus on other measures.
For example, in the case of the battle between HDDs and SSDs, we have that the former wins in storage cost, however, there is a point where the additional Teras do not bring additional value to the user , because each time they become less useful. One can also try to sell an MMO mouse with high DPI, programmable macros and extra buttons to someone who will use it for office work, he will not use them and they are not an added value.
In other words, each of us is a world and we have a different way of absorbing technology. And it is important to take this into account because sometimes what may seem like an ideal scale to us is not so for the rest of the people. This is why, when there is a change in consumption, the most enthusiastic are generally the most reluctant. As it always starts out as a low spec product for the average user.
Is the end of the turns near?
What we say is not a statement, but rather a question. Today, there are a series of power consumption guidelines that must be met to sell a full tower computer in stores. Of course, the current standard dates back to the year 2014, when although there were concerns about climate change, regulators weren’t taken over by people obsessed with the issue.
At the same time we have that the ATX 3.0 standard has increased the energy consumption of PCs, a scandal and although at the moment this is not noticeable, since it is rather a matter of the short term future, l obsessed with reducing climate change and carbon sooner or later, bureaucrats around the world, those who regulate what products can go out and those who can’t, will decide to veto the tower to play extremely powerful.
Meanwhile, in stores, laptops are exploding in terms of sales, and the pre-built gaming towers you usually see are selling for less and less. Laptops are the breakthrough innovation of the towers and when they’re good enough they just let them gather dust and don’t sell. The incentive is therefore less and less strong. If we add to this an unsustainable price increase for the gaming market, in the end only the “Do it yourself” market remains.
How would this affect the component market?
In the event that we decide to cut the consumption of tower PCs as much as possible, this would mean the disappearance of high-performance products that take advantage of this high level of power. If we had to make a prediction about what this “dystopian” future might bring us, it would be that everything that has no equivalent in laptops will disappear. Which doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop seeing desktop systems, but rather that we’ll see a boom in systems with everything integrated or a boom in MiniPCs.
