Happy 30th Birthday PC!
We celebrate the 30th birthday of the PC, and look back at the one that started it all
A BRIGHT FUTURE?
The PC platform came to dominate a rapidly expanding personal computer market, whose total sales rised from 11 million in 1985, through 58 million a decade later to 207 million by 2005. Looking forward to 2015, worldwide sales are expected to top 400 million, driven by continuing growth in Asian economies. This massive demand produces economies of scale, meaning that while the modern PC is vastly more powerful than its ancestors, it’s also massively cheaper: At launch the IBM 5150 cost from around £1,000 upwards, equivalent to over £3,000 in today’s money – which would buy you 10 of today’s basic PCs.
These days you can get a powerful PC with a monitor for as little as £350, check out this Palicomp Core i3 Blast 530OC37-24 as an example
As prices have fallen, the people buying PCs have changed. The platform has long been vital to business and education, but with help from the internet and formats like the MP3, we’ve welcomed affordable entertainment PCs into our homes in huge numbers. According to government figures, 75 per cent of UK homes had a PC by 2009 and almost as many had an internet connection. Such widespread and connected computing has given us new ways to stay in touch, share opinions and even voice dissent. Perhaps it’s fair to say that the PC has become a tool of social change.
Technology never stands still, however, and with more than two billion PCs sold worldwide, the main component suppliers have become rather good at designing and building semiconductor devices. Increasingly their expertise doesn’t just find its way into fully-fledged computers. Now, laptops, nettops and netbooks vie with tablets and smartphones that make our access to computers and the internet far more convenient and widespread.
Thirty years on, IBM is celebrating its centenary and its progeny remains at the centre of a revolution that it helped enable. Take a moment with us to wish the PC a happy birthday: looking forward 30 years, it’s hard to imagine that recognisable desktop PCs will still be with us.