Consume vs Produce
Another reason for the decline of the desktop / PC market, or perhaps rather, the rapid growth of small and mobile, is that "computers" are increasingly being used to consume stuff, rather than to produce it. If all I need to do is to look at / listen to / comment on / download stuff, then a tablet or even a mobile phone with a browser will do the job perfectly well.
As a designer using CAD, I spend my days PRODUCING new stuff. I absolutely MUST have a large screen and a mouse - touchscreen really does not have the precision required for CAD. Traditionally, this is a desktop, and that is what I currently use.
That said, it would not surprise me in the slightest to find that, in a few years, I am using a phone / tablet attached to my large screen and mouse. Mobile devices will almost certainly have sufficient computing power and memory, and will for sure take up much less space on my desk.
More importantly, the operating system and the CAD software doing the job simply do not matter, provided that I can get the results I need and my customers want. I left M$ behind years ago for Linux, and if I have to use Android or Free BSD or something else entirely in the future, so what?
It is not Microsoft or Win 10 that are the problem per se. It is that, because they have no foothold in the future (mobile), they are actually irrelevant. Hard to see how to recover from that....
Biting the hand that feeds IT
