This month saw another lackluster performance in PC sales. Some folks have indicated that this plateau of sales marks the start of the "Post-PC Era". I think that they are right, except that we will call it the "Tablet/cloud Era". We didn't call the PC Era the "Post Mainframe Era".
This new market is different for Microsoft. They enter as a challenger, not as the leader. They have entered other markets as a challenger (the XBOX is the most obvious example), but mostly they have lived in a market in which they were the top banana. Microsoft struck a fortuitous deal with IBM to supply PC-DOS for the IBM PC, won the OS/2-Windows battle, and had advantages in the development of applications for Windows. (Some have charged that Microsoft had unfair advantages, in that they had detailed technical knowledge of the inner workings of Windows and used that knowledge to build superior offerings, but that debate belongs in the 1990s.)
In the tablet/cloud market, Microsoft enters as a late-comer, after Apple and Google. Microsoft cannot rely on the automatic support of the business market. Success will depend not only on their ability to build hardware and operating systems, but to grow an ecosystem of apps and app developers.
This new market is different for Apple. They enter as the leader, not as a niche provider. Will they keep their lead? Apple has experience as the "odd guy" with a small fraction of the market. Apple is the only manufacturer from the pre-IBM PC age that is still around. Prior to the IBM PC, Apple had a large share but was not a leader. After the IBM PC, Apple kept a small share but remained a side player.
In the tablet/cloud market, Apple is a leader. They provide the most-coveted hardware. Companies copy their designs (and get sued by Apple). Success will require Apple to keep providing new, cool hardware and easy-to-use software.
For Apple and Microsoft, this time it really is different.
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