The main concept of evolutionary electronics revolves around lighter, cheaper, smarter. With this in mind, it would be interesting to know what the major electronic giants could possibly have in their goody bag. An interesting insight into this was given at CNBC by Toni Sacconaghi, a Sanford Bernstein senior research analyst, when he was discussing if Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s new release, Surface Pro 3 would be a threat to Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), and the discussion eventually went to the long term outlook on computer hardware.
Sacconaghi considers that there is a possibility in the future for mobile devices to converge and to combine a laptop and a tablet in one device. Consumers would love this idea because they do not want to go around having three different devices with three sets of accessories. He hopes that within three to five years, there would be fewer standalone notebooks or tablets, and there would be many convergent devices, although the question still is who will be the leader: Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) or Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Android-based devices.
During the discussion which took place on CNBC, had the host questioning him as to who would be the forerunner of such a convergent technology system in the market. Of course, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) beats all its competitors in terms of innovation. But there are other competitive aspects such as a larger screen for a popular device, or a tablet with very high functionality, and will Apple be able to overcome these market aspects? Of course with such a convergent technology being proposed, there would be a rat race to top the market ratings.
Sacconaghi stands by Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), fortifying his stand by mentioning that Apple was the developer of the MacBook Air, which is the lightest notebook, and in a way, Apple has been in the primary phase of developing the components that go into such a converged device. He cites hardware and operating system incompatibility, as a reason why Apple has not come out with such a product yet.
“It hasn’t come out with one and I think in part because it has two separate operating systems and two separate chips; the MacBook runs on an Intel chip with the MacOS operating system and the tablet runs on an ARM based chip with an iOS operating system. So there is a technical barrier for Apple to do that. And it will be interesting to see if ultimately Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) moves in that direction either by coming out with a larger tablet that has Mac like capabilities or it kind of tries to reinvent the category, much like it did with tablets” quoted Sacconaghi.
It would be an interesting thing to look forward to, and even more interesting to note the level of innovation each company exhibits in such a convergent methodology of hardware development.
The full intervention of Mr. Sacconaghi can be watched below:
