So, we hear that Planet Earth is home to
four billion phone lines. Now it can claim to house over one billion installed PCs -- what do those neighboring planets have on that, huh? According to research firm Gartner, the number of "installed PCs worldwide has surpassed 1 billion units," and it estimates that said figure is growing at around 12-percent annually. Should this trend continue, we'll be reporting on 2 billion sometime during 2014. It should be noted that this figure accounts for computers
in use rather than units shipped, and while the current ratio remains slanted towards mature markets, Gartner expects emerging markets to (expectedly) account for a larger share as we climb to 2 billion. Unsurprisingly, the firm also suggests that around 180 million PCs will be replaced this year, with around 35 million of those hitting landfills "with little or no regard for their toxic content." Kind of puts a damper on things, wouldn't you say?
[Via
Reuters, image courtesy of
Wikimedia]
posted Jun 23rd 2008 9:59AM
thought it was way less
Woot my student computing lab haha where did you find this engadget...
NO, that's MY student computer lab!
Horrah for Engineering Lab F211!
Errr, who counted them? The ones in use only??
how can they tell what is in use and whats not? and does this include servers since some servers are made from PC?
Is it just me or the monitors aren't matching the desktop PCs? The machines seem to accept freakin' 5¼" disks...
Yep they don't thats cos they used to have 17in CRT monitors ontop until they replaced them with TFT screens. Still damn slow though.
I am several of those billion woooooot
My prediction is that almost every TV in 2014 would have a fast computer built right into it.
So in a few years we shall be enslaved by the computers, if we arent enslaved by them already. They shall put us in pods and use us as energy. We will live virtual lives. . .
oh wait, thats the matrix movies.
i for one welcome our future computer lords and we shall call them Xenu!
Tom Cruise will be thrilled with Xenu's return. Xenu shall abolish psychology, among other things.
and ur need to get a girlfriend!!!
and ur needz to lern to spell, tomo
In fact, after looking at his history, he's never commented something that wasn't trolling. Like, not once.
Doesn't he get bored of being repetitive?
...now the trolling I replied to is gone and I look crazy.
oh well, you can't have everything.
How high would this number be if it included laptops?
1,068,427,581.002753 (margin of error +/- 14) why the hell would you ask that??
How does this relate to virtualization? VMs are no longer for just servers anymore. More and more companies are trying to get into the VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) space. You're regular full fledge PC will be replaced by a dynamically generated VM and what you will have at your desktop will be a dummy terminal with minimal power, heat, footprint needs. At that point you have to change the way you count your PCs. Your factors would be:
1. Do you count the thin-clients at the user end that have a fraction of the footprint as a regular desktop?
2. Do you count the Virtual machines as independant machines or do you count the servers that hosts the VMs. Today you can have a good 60+ VMs running on a decent server class machine.
Will it slow down the count to 2 billion?
"what do those neighboring planets have on that, huh?"
Well, they don't have people without a PC, while Planet Earth...
That generic image of a computer lab is the CAD lab in the engineering dept at my uni, weird.
To me, the bigger part of this Gartner research project is what we covered on PC Authorities, that of the 1 billion PCs in use are all primarily USA, Europe and Asia, which accounted to 15% of the population! So only 15% of the human population are using PCs, when in fact, we probably should be concerned about the 85% of under-developed nations who don't get the opportunity to use PCs. It's sad.
My 2 cents...
Jeff McCord
www.pcauthorities.com
not sure what your definition of Asia is, but Asia really includes all countries from UAE to Japan .... and offcourse includes China & India (population 2 billion) ..... so US + Europe + Asia is not 15% of the population but more like 80% of the population
And 990 million of them are running an f***ing spam bot.
OMG, i feel so special knowing that i use 1 out of 1,000,000,000 computers in the world....... =D
I feel like this count should include a good amount more than what it does - my iphone (just an example of a portable computer) or any smartphone could be just as powerful as an ~ 8 year old computer; why not include them?
I guess the EEE pc will be helping the count up to the next billion, this time round.