The death of PC brands

We're about to see the death of PC brands.

Let's be honest, do we really care about the brand of PC? Does it matter if the box is made by HP or Dell, or Asus? We merely want a box to perform computations.

Some people are sensitive to brands. Some are loyal to specific companies, but most of the sensitive-to-brand people are anti-loyal. That is, they pick certain brands of PCs and avoid them. You can identify them by their call: "I will never use a brand ABC PC again." Most likely they had a bad experience with the specific brand at some point in the past.

When choosing to buy a PC, brand, if considered at all, is usually a proxy for quality. If someone has good experiences with a specific brand, they will continue to buy that brand. If they have poor experiences, they will choose other brands.

People can make decisions along these lines because PCs are commodities. Each PC brand (except Apple equipment, which is the exception) is virtually identical. They all run Windows. They all have processors and memory to run Windows and the popular applications. I suspect that when people select a PC, they use the following criteria:

1. Will it run my software (present and future software)?
2. Is it a good value (reliable, economical)?
3. Do I like the color, size, and shape?

I think that these have always been the criteria for selecting computing equipment. But in the early PC days, there was more thought given to the first question.


With today's commodity PCs, the first question is rarely considered. It is assumed that the PC will run the desired software. A few folks with specific processing needs may be sensitive to memory and disk space, and certainly anyone provisioning a server room will ask lots of questions. But for the average consumer (and the average end-user in corporate environments) the average PC will do the job.


In contrast, the early days of PCs saw great variations in hardware. Prior to the IBM PC, each manufacturer had their own architecture and their own software base. An Apple II used a 6502 processor, was able to display color and graphics, and ran Apple DOS. A Radio Shack TRS-80 used a Z-80 (or a 68000), displayed black-and-white text and graphics, and ran TRS-DOS (or Xenix). A Commodore PET used a 6502, displayed black-and-white text and text-based graphics, and ran Microsoft BASIC (called "Commodore BASIC").


The differences between computer brands were significant. Some brands offered cassette storage, others disk. Some offered serial ports, others parallel ports, and yet others none. The keyboards varied from vendor to vendor (and even model to model).


When the hardware varied, committing to a brand committed you to a lot of other capabilities.

Things began to change when IBM introduced the PC. Actually, it was not the introduction of the IBM PC that changed the market, but the IBM PC clones. When IBM introduced their PC, it was another offering from another vendor with specific capabilities.

It was only the PC clones that made PCs commodities. Once vendors began cloning the PC design, variation between brands dropped. For a while, there was variation in included equipment and portability. (Compaq made its success with portable PC clones.)

And apparently once the consumers in the market decide that hardware is a commodity, they are loathe to return to vendor-specific equipment. IBM tried to introduce vendor-specific equipment with the PS/2, but the special features of the PS/2 were quickly adopted by other manufacturers in their traditional designs. The PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors were adopted as standard, but the MicroChannel bus was not.

Fast-forward to today, with the rise of smartphones and tablets. Apple has it's offerings of the iPhone, iPod, and iPad. Google has pushed Android on a number of branded devices. Microsoft is pushing Windows 8 on devices, but the tablets will be brand-less; like the iPhone and iPad, the Windows 8 tablets will simply say "Microsoft". The hardware brand has been absorbed into the software, except for Android.


I expect that the brandlessness of hardware will spill over into the desktop PC world. It already has for Apple desktop devices. Full-size desktop PCs are commoditized enough, are bland enough, that the manufacturer makes no difference. (Again, this is for the average user. Users with specific needs will be conscious of the brand.) Full-size desktop PCs will lose their brand identity. Small-format desktop PCs, which can be as small as an Altoids tin or even a pack of gum, will lose their brand identity too, or perhaps never gain one to start.


The questions for selecting computing equipment will remain:

1. Will it run my software?
2. Is it a good value?
3. Do I like the color, size, and shape?

But the answer will be one of Apple, Microsoft, or Google.