Today I was at the last meeting of the UUK Efficiency and Modernisation Task Group in London. Following the publication of the report, it's now time to get an action plan together and start to implement it. The 17 recommendations have been grouped into five workstreams, and various constituent groups will act as delivery partners, overseen by UUK and a monitoring group. Key to the success will be a hub - a place to share good practice, discuss initiatives and be signposted to case studies and useful information. The group is still finalising details, and the plan will be published soon - I'll post a link as soon as it's ready. UCISA will be one of the constituent groups helping to deliver on the plans.
Following on from recent discussions on the increase in mobile devices, the rise of the tablet and the question about whether we need PC labs anymore, I was interested to see today that Gartner has released figures showing that the sales of PCs in Western Europe have declined by 11.4% in Q3 of 2011. In contrast, sales of smartphones have increased by 42% in the same period, with Google's Android operating system leading the market at 52%, Apple iOS at 15%, and Microsoft down to 1.5%. Rory Cellan Jones has summarised the figures in a good blog post here, concluding that:
"So the overall message from Gartner seems to be that the PC has entered a period of decline, that netbooks are dead, mobile computing is the future, Android is winning the smartphone wars, and Microsoft and Nokia have already been left behind in the most important technology industry of the next decade."
"Then again, this time next year, the world may have changed again".
1 comment:
Interesting percentages. At first I thought that PC sales down by 11% could just be a reflection of the economy but the same period showing a growth in smartphone sales of 42%. Wow. How long before the PC is as seen as archaic and space wasting as telex? (Remember telex?)
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