Bye Bye PC? (in Japan)

In a recent "Committed Sardine" blog entry "PC's are so 20th Century", educational visionary Ian Jukes shares a Globe and Market article that discusses how consumers are choosing to spend their dollars on other, smaller gadgets with similar power and speed.

And why wouldn't they, when smartphones, iPods, and a variety of gaming devices have nearly the same computing capability as a PC?

According to Globe and Market: "It's clear why consumers are shunning PCs. Millions download music directly to their mobiles, and many more use their handsets for online shopping and to play games. Digital cameras connect directly to printers and high-definition TVs for viewing photos, bypassing PCs altogether. Movies now download straight to TVs.

More than 50 per cent of Japanese send e-mail and browse the Internet from their mobile phones, according to a 2006 survey by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The same survey found that 30 per cent of people with e-mail on their phones used PC-based e-mail less, including 4 per cent who said they had stopped sending e-mails from PCs completely."

And PC sales in the US are starting to decline as well.

Is it time to start rethinking how we are spending our districts' very limited technology budgets? Maybe that handheld computer at $300 (or less) is a better choice than another PC for the lab??