Verizon chief says phones pose threat to home PCs

At the Mobilebeat 2010 conference, Verizon director of new technology and development, Humphrey Chen, spoke publicly about how smartphones will soon encroach onto the home PC market. The provider is even considering offering a docking station complete with a keyboard, camera and monitor that could effectively turn a smartphone into a desktop PC. Chen also names the high-speed, next-gen 4G mobile broadband network it's building up as another way to bring Internet speeds to mobile devices closer to those of a home PC.

Its trial LTE runs in Boston and Seattle deliver 10Mbps download speeds and up to 5Mbps upload speeds. Another idea is to put a consumer and business client on the same handset, billing two parties for the device and allowing users to carry one handset both for pleasure and work.

"With gigahertz processors, the divide between the smartphone and PC has narrowed," Chen says. He adds that this could spell trouble for companies such as Microsoft, as they would lose Windows or Office revenue, with the money instead going to the likes of Google Apps and Verizon cloud computing.

Microsoft has historically struggled both in the mobile space, where Windows Mobile is continuing to lose share, and in online services, where it's still losing significant amounts of money. It has also fought what's perceived as a losing battle against a transition away from conventional PCs and towards hardware like the iPad. CEO Steve Ballmer has insisted PCs will always be relevant in the face of claims by Apple's Steve Jobs that they're going away, but so far Windows-based tablets have sold at rates just a fraction that of what Apple has seen. [via EETimes]

By Electronista Staff