Gartner Group Sees No Threat To Wintel
(10/13/98 9:40 a.m. ET)
By John Gartner, TechWeb
Although there will be huge changes in computing
technologies in the next five years, the companies that
pull the strings will be the same, according to Gartner
Group, a research company based in Stamford, Conn.
At Gartner Group's annual IT/Expo in Orlando, Fla.,
Monday, analysts said they projected the PC industry
will see rapid growth in new markets and continue its
"bigger, smarter, faster" trend.
Gartner analysts said they predicted PC penetration will
rise from 43 percent of U.S. households today to 63
percent by 2002. The aggressive projections forecast
rewritable DVD drives will compete with, and
eventually supplant, VCRs for video recording, and
children will shun Nintendo game consoles for
technically superior PCs.
According to Gartner, PC sales will more than double
from 80 million in 1997 to nearly 180 million units in
2002, fueled largely by demand from developing
nations such as China, India, and Brazil.
In a session on desktop PC trends, Dataquest analyst
Martin Reynolds said PCs will soon no longer be
measured in MHz, but in GHz, surpassing the 2-GHz
mark. Standard features of the PC of 2002, Reynolds
said, will likely include a 30-gigabyte hard drive, 128
megabytes of RAM, a rewritable DVD drive, and
100-megabit-per-second Ethernet network adapters.
Those specifications may seem like science fiction to
today's desktop computer users, but reliance on
Windows and Intel's processor architecture will be
reality, according to Reynolds.
"The industry is moving to a complete Intel architecture
and Microsoft NT solution from server to client device,"
he said.
Microsoft's Win CE mobile computing platform,
code-named Jupiter, and Intel's StrongArm processors
will make significant inroads in the handheld and PDA
markets, he added.
"There are no significant threats to the Intel or Microsoft
desktop PC franchises through 2003," said Chris
Goodhue, another PC analyst at Gartner. Goodhue
added the Java-reliant network computer market,
previously positioned as a viable alternative to Wintel,
won't reach more than 1 million units per year and will
thus remain a niche device.
But despite Gartner Group's rosy outlook for the Wintel
platform, the research company also warned about
adopting new products too quickly. Win NT 5.0,
scheduled to ship in mid-1999, won't be widely
available until 2000, Goodhue said, and he suggested
IT managers wait six to nine months before deploying it.
He also said it would be wise to wait until after
Microsoft releases the first NT 5.0 service pack
upgrade to fix bugs.
Microsoft's goal of moving Windows users to NT won't
happen as quickly as the company would like. "Plan on
Windows 9.x being part of your administration
requirements in 2002 and beyond," Goodhue said.
Likewise, Intel's 64-bit Merced processor won't be
adopted widely in desktop PCs before 2002, but will
remain a server chip. Reynolds said mainframes will
continue to have performance advantages over
microprocessor-based servers through at least the next
four to five years.
The PC's continued growth will keep not only Intel and
Microsoft healthy, but will also mean strong bottom
lines for PC manufacturers such as IBM, Dell,
Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard, the analysts said.
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