As a web developers we do need to watch global hardware and software sales as it can impact our employment prospects. Having worked for IDC research back in 1990s, I always follow their assessments of the market with great interest. This week when I heard the news that Shipments of Smartphones, tablets and other app-enabled devices will overtake PC shipments in the next 18 months, I thought I do some research to see if this change will actually affect us developers in any shape or form. I don’t want to think of it like the way the headlines are quoting this by saying this is “an event that may signify the end of the PC-centric era”.

The headlines speak of a historic shift, but for us as web developers, it would mean we just have to adapt to development of new markets for, mobile and tablet computing and in comparison there will be less of PCs and laptops focused software development. The other thing to consider is that IDC still maintains that the overall shipments of PCs will continue to increase so for those of us that are mainly developing for PC related software and tools, there will remain a healthy market to service for foreseeable future.

IDC projections for worldwide shipments this year of app-enabled devices, which include Smartphones and media tablets such as the iPad, will be exceeding PC shipments sometimes in 2012.

During the last year a lot of us invested some efforts in the SmartPhone App developments for iPhone and Android phones and since most of my colleagues are in Windows .Net development, they were very happy when this month’s Microsoft release of WP7. Talking to some of my colleges the overall impression is that we are able to continue building applications for existing PC related web tools as well as applications for Web and Mobile platform at the same time with our existing knowledge.

IDC's forecast is also predicting that worldwide IT spending that is expected to grow overall by 5.7% in 2011 to $1.6 trillion. That is if the Europe's economic problems or the U.S. unemployment situation does not worsen in the next few years. So prediction is also calming my nerves.

One other good forecast for us web and mobile developers, is that the Cloud computing is also going to grow at a very fast rate. Public Cloud services will grow by 30% in 2011, rising to $28.7 billion worldwide. IDC has also started to forecast private cloud services, which were estimated at $13 billion in 2011, an increase of 33%.

On the whole, with all these changes that are coming our way, it is likely that we will have much more work to do to bring all the existing applications we currently work on, such as the Web Content Management Systems or the Ecommerce solutions paying for our fees. With the IT spending going up in line with inflation and PC/Smartphone/Tablet shipment numbers also going up, then we as software developers, we are likely to be asked to continue to work and enhance these applications so to be ready for the challenges set by the forthcoming changes in the IT landscape.

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About Scifiwood News Reviews and Blogs

These are various short and long News Articles, Reviews and Blogs by Salar Golestanian and employees of SalarO.com as well as contributors of Scifiwood.com. The subject matter are mixed topics with Pure Science to Science Fiction as well as general topics on Web Trends, Technology, Software Engineering genre, or whatever subject that can affect the convergence of today's technology with Science Fiction in any shape or form. These Blogs and Reviews don't have commercial or corporate aspiration, so they are indeed completely independent views. Some of these entries may be short and just link you to the actual news or site that can expand further on the subject of interest. In Phase II we plan to incorporate some Social Networking applications within the portal.