Ladies & gentlemen, let me break it down for you – The PC as we know it today is on the way out.

Now, you don’t need a crystal ball to figure that out; laptops are everywhere, smartphone sales keep rising, netbook sales are rising and so Apple’s iPad and other similar mobile device will only further this reality very soon. But of course, there will always be people in need of a full computer tower with a kick-ass video card for gaming, graphic artists, musicians, and geeks that require mo’powa!  But the PC will no longer dominate households. Instead they will be replaced by more compact devices that require ultra-fast boot times, no pointing device and no local software installed other than the operating system; all software needed will be…in the cloud – look that up it’s fascinating ;-)

Some of you reading this may be thinking I’m hallucinating but I bet you a thousand bottles of tomato juice that within 5 years you will do most of your computing stuff on a “lite” computer of some sort, either on a tablet computer, smartphone or whatever else.

Now, the questions beg, who will lead the new computing era? Microsoft? Apple? Google? For me, I can tell you that I do not have my money on Microsoft. Why? Well they’re already losing ground to Apple (iPhone OS) and Google (Android and soon Chrome OS). I know this week they presented the new & upcoming version of  Windows Mobile v7 now dubbed Windows Phone 7 Series in Barcelona but, well, with little fanfare. The product looks alright but it just may be too little too late for them; the launch is actually set for October 2010. Oh and it won’t be an actual “Windows Phone”; they will be licensing the OS to other vendors, such as HTC and Samsung I suppose. Same bullshit as they did with Windows but only this time it just won’t work. Which brings me to my next point…

A lot of people bitches that Apple have a very “locked-down” ecosystem, both for the Mac and the iPhone. And you know what? It’s true. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad either. For Apple, having everything locked down allows to, not only insure a perfect synergy between hardware and software but also avoid having crappy $299 Mac clones that works like shit like their Windows counterpart. Apple works that way, and more than ever it seems like the right model to follow nowadays – and it is. And Microsoft could learn a thing or two from doing that. A matter of fact, Apple’s renewed success of the past 10 years is owed in part to Microsoft’s failure in the new computer era (post Windows 95/XP).

And as for Google, now that’s a question to ask ourselves isn’t it? Those guys are getting BIG! and fast too!  But I am skeptical about that Google Chrome OS. Why? Well the fact that it’s another Linux distribution I’m afraid it might become just that – another Linux distro. And Linux has “geek” print all over it. However, Google are not retarded and I doubt they’ll introduce another geeky Linux distro that we really don’t need. The following video shows exactly what Chrome OS will be and it looks very interesting:

Well anyways, I think the next 5-10 years looks very exciting and promising as ever.