This post was written in 2016.

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs stood on a stage and showed the world the iPhone. It seemed important at the time. Nobody knew just how important.

Thanks to the iPhone, Apple became the world’s most valuable company. It isn’t hyperbole to divide the history of personal technology into before and after.

End of the consumer PC

The iPhone also killed the consumer PC market. This didn’t happen overnight, and it hasn’t fully played out yet — but it happened.

PC sales didn’t slow immediately. It took four years after the first iPhone for them to peak. In 2011, the world bought 380 million personal computers; consumers accounted for roughly 54 percent, or about 200 million units. 

Since then the market has dropped off a cliff. By 2015, total sales had fallen to around 275 million, with consumers accounting for just 49 percent, meaning consumer PC sales had collapsed by roughly a third, from 200 million to 130 million, in four years.

Analysts at IDC and Gartner expect the decline to continue, with business sales eventually stabilising. Nobody is making a similar forecast for consumers. There is no happy ending in sight.

From desktop to pocket

IDC’s ConsumerScape 360 programme tracks how people use technology. In 2012, about 90 percent of PC owners checked email on their computers daily. By 2015 that had fallen to 65 percent. If you need to check email, a phone or tablet is faster, lighter, and works on the bus, the train or in a pub. 

IDC found the same pattern across news reading, web browsing and social media. The PC is simply too much trouble for most of these tasks when a better option is always in your pocket.

Today, most people go to their phone first for almost anything online. It’s not only Apple’s iPhone, Samsung, Huawei, Sony and others run Android. Every one of these devices traces its roots to the moment Jobs walked out on that stage.

A global shift

In developed countries this represents a major change in how people use technology. In much of the developing world it’s a bigger revolution still: phones are the only computers most people there have ever known. 

Modern phones outsell personal computers four to one. About half the global adult population owns one; by the end of this decade that figure is expected to reach 80 percent.

There are still tasks that don’t work well on phones and tablets, PC gaming remains a clear example, but that list gets shorter every year.

Some consumer PC replacements will be hybrid devices like the Microsoft Surface Pro or the 2015 MacBook, products that sit squarely between laptop and tablet. After years of ignoring the trend, and writing off $7.6 billion on its Nokia acquisition, Microsoft moved sharply: building tightly integrated hardware and software, and releasing strong versions of Office for phones and tablets. Samsung and Huawei now make Surface-like devices of their own.

A vicious circle

The consumer PC is now in a death spiral. As sales fall, demand for apps and services falls with them, developers invest less in the platform. This in turn drives more users away. The virtuous circle that fuelled three decades of PC growth has reversed.

Consumer PCs are not dead yet, but they are in irreversible decline. Expect further consolidation among manufacturers, and more pain for PC-dependent companies like Intel. Customers have moved on.