Devices and Gadgets

 

Vocabulary

era	post (3)	eye-opening
impact	shipment	emerging market
shade	combine	put in the shade
app	outstrip	outnumber
soar	catch up	mobile device
gadget	disappear	account for
leap	emerge	all sorts of
decade	circulation	take off (3)
stuff	zip around	explosion (2)
access

 
 
 
 
 
 

Video

 
 
 
 

Transcript

Many tech folk think we have entered what Steve Jobs liked to call a “post-PC era”.

This doesn’t mean that PCs are about to disappear; shipments of them will keep growing, especially in emerging markets, hungry for computing power.

But smart phones and tablet computers are putting PCs in the shade.

This year, combined shipments of the two devices are likely to outstrip those of PCs for the first time.

And they will keep growing strongly.

In many rich countries, smart phones now outnumber more basic-feature phones.

And in emerging markets such as China and India, they’re expected to catch up with feature phones too.

Downloadable software applications — or apps — have helped make these tablets and smartphones so popular: almost 18 billion apps will be downloaded this year.

And that number will soar as more mobile devices are sold.

Many of these apps are free . . . but few are used regularly.

One study found that the ten most popular android apps accounted for 43% of all usage. And the top 50 for almost two-thirds of it.

As mobile gadgets become more powerful, they’re being used more at work.

In 2010, 31% of devices used by information workers, to access things such as spreadsheets and customer data bases, were their own.

This year, that number leaped to 41%, partly because of the impact of tablet computers.

Tech-types refer to this as the consumerization of IT.

Although the number of PCs in use has risen over time, all sorts of mobile, web-connected devices are taking off.

Some ten billion of these could be in circulation by the end of the decade.

This will produce an explosion of mobile data: by 2015, some 6.3 exabytes of this stuff will be zipping around each month, which is equivalent of 63 billion copies of The Economist.

Fortunately, much of this mobile data will be in the form of videos and like the one you are watching now.

It promises to be an eye-opening, new era of personal technology.

Questions

1. We are entering a “post-PC era”. What does this mean? Will the PC end up in a museum?

2. The market for basic-feature mobile phones and smart phones will remain the same. Is this right or wrong?

3. Smartphones and tablets have become increasingly popular. Why have these devices or gadgets become so popular?

4. Does the 80-20 Rule apply to apps?

5. Mobile devices are being used more often in people’s jobs. Is this true or false?

6. What do 10 billion and 6.3 refer to?

7. What is or will be the most used form of internet data bytes?
 
 
A. Do you have a gadget? What kinds of devices do you have?

B. All my friends, classmates, colleagues and neighbors have a mobile device. Yes or no?

C. Do you know anyone who does not have a gadget?

D. Is everyone carrying a mobile device good, bad, both, neither or it depends? What are the pros and cons (benefits and drawbacks) of electronic gadgets? Are people becoming more withdrawn from society and more hooked on to their devices?

E. Do you and your friends use smartphones at work? How do you use them?

F. What may happen in the future?