The PC at 25: mobile to finish the job.
This month marks the 25th birthday of the IBM PC. The Economist comments, in an article on "The dream of the personal computer", that "it is the mobile phone that now seems likely to carry the dream of the 'personal computer' to its conclusion".
The PCs great achievements include increased compatibility, reduced costs and wider ownership. Yet, "mobile phones are cheaper, simpler and more reliable that PCs, and market forces [...] are already putting them in the hands of even the world's poorest people. Initiatives to spread the PCs in the developing world, in contrast, rely on top-down funding from governments or aid agencies, rather than the bottom-up adoption by consumers."
The articles goes on to note some of the uses the mobile phone has been put to:
- Zambia: merchants using phones for banking.
- Senegal: farmers monitor prices.
- South Africa: patient records updated by health workers.
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