Future of Desktop Computers

Society is moving towards increasingly more mobile devices every year. Smartphones and tablets now consume the bulk of web content and laptops are now lighter and more powerful than ever before. So will this lead to the death of the desktop computer? Not entirely but we will see a shift in who the desktop is marketed towards.

The desktop computer will no longer be advertised as the professional’s power station and instead will be marketed as the perfect computer for parents. This is because young children will be the last major demographic to still benefit from a desktop computer. While adults of all ages and professions are making the switch from desktop to laptop out of convenience and portability, children are not.

Many parents opt for a family desktop computer because they don’t trust their kids to be gentle with a laptop. Laptops can be dropped, screens can be scratched, and keyboards can be easily ruined by food/drinks. And any of this damage usually means replacing the entire laptop, which is not cheap. However desktops are more robust, easier to repair, and allow parents to quickly swap out a gunky keyboard or mouse if there’s a spill. So even as laptops improve in the future, their inherent fragility makes them ill suited for young kids. That is why we will see a huge shift where desktops start to be primarily marketed towards parents.

I believe we’ll see the industrial design of desktops change entirely in the near future too. Instead of the bland, black boxes we are accustomed to today, we’ll likely see more playful and imaginative designs that attract parents and children alike. We’ve already seen a similar phenomenon happen with Google’s OnHub router. In an effort to make their Wi-Fi router more attractive to consumers, Google designed a product that was more sculptural and could be highly decorated. The image below shows just a few creative ways that people have decorated their OnHub router. This kind of artistic expression in a device is exactly what we will see when it comes to desktop computers.

Children love to be creative and use their imagination so they will be much more attracted to a desktop that fuels their creativity than to an unimaginative box desktop like we’re accustomed to. Assuming the market does indeed grow to favor children’s desktop computers, I think we’ll see some very interesting trends emerge. Marketing will shift its focus away from highlighting the internal specs and cost of the device and instead highlight the ways it spurs a child’s creativity. Unusual materials like wood, fabric, and paper will also start to make their way into products. The image we have of desktops and children’s computers today will fundamentally change in the next few years.

So the desktop is experiencing a slow death but it's not completely without a consumer base. The desktop as we know it will fade away while laptops, tablets, and smartphones become the norm but this huge market shift will see a new niche industry blossom that is the child's desktop. I expect in the next ten years we'll almost universally associate the desktop computer with children and creativity. Going from a professional's workhorse to a kid's first computer will certainly be an interesting transition to watch.