Is the end of the corporate desktop near?

Is the reign of the desktop PC in the enterprise nearing an end? Don Reisinger of eWeek thinks so, pointing to a recent study by research firm iSuppli. The study showed that desktop shipments are expected to slide by some 18.1 percent this year even as laptop shipments will increase by more than 10 percent in the same interim.

Beyond the mobility afforded by laptops and the increasing pervasiveness of Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, another strength of the laptop is the movement toward Software as a service, or SaaS. With an increasing number of tools and software online, the necessity of a powerful desktop platform is diminishing by the day. Indeed, Reisinger pointed out that even Microsoft is betting on the Cloud with Windows Azure.

What do you think? Do you think that the end of the desktop is at hand?

For more on this story:
- check out this article at eWeek

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