The one-billionth PC

SANTA CLARA, California — When it comes to the PC, science fiction has become science fact.

When introduced some 25 years ago, PCs were big and clunky, and performed simple word processing and basic spreadsheet functions. Today, the home PC is a powerful all-in-one digital jukebox, movie studio, photo darkroom and electronic game board.

For companies worldwide, the PC has brought unprecedented productivity and efficiency to the way business is done. With a PC connected to the Internet, it’s possible for even the smallest company to sell products and provide customer service around the clock and around the globe. In the past two decades, technology innovation and the expansion of the Internet have changed the future of computing – a billion times over.

1 billion PCs and counting

Industry analyst firm Gartner Dataquest announced that the PC industry has shipped the one billionth PC. The industry reached this notable milestone in April 2002, roughly 25 years after the debut of the first commercially successful and widely available personal computer, the 1974 Altair powered by the Intel 8080 chip.

Intel’s contribution to the evolution of personal computing began with its 1971 invention of the microprocessor, often referred to as the brain of the PC. From the Intel 8080 chip used in the Altair to the 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor that powered the watershed IBM PC in 1981, this historic path of innovation has brought the world today to the era of the Intel Pentium 4 processor, the world’s fastest processor. PCs based on the Pentium 4 processor at 2.53 GHz deliver higher performance for digital media and enriched multi-tasking user experiences.

Today, PCs are in roughly 60 percent of US households, followed by 49 percent in Western Europe and 38 percent in the Asia-Pacific. At the end of last year, nearly half a billion people around the world had access to the Internet from their homes. In 2001, more than $615 billion in revenue was generated worldwide from e-commerce transactions. In its journey to the one billion milestone, the PC has profoundly changed the way companies transact business and how people communicate, shop, learn, access information and entertain themselves.

The one billionth PC is likely enabling its owner to do a variety of things once thought of as science fiction. Today, people rely on PCs to send e-mail and instant messages, surf the Web, manage a household budget and family calendar, edit home movies and burn them onto DVDs, mix music, create photo albums with narration and mood music, play action-packed games, and engage in a host of other compelling new uses.

"The PC is so versatile and so good at so many things," said Martin Reynolds, vice president of Gartner Dataquest and author of the analyst firm’s report on the one billionth PC. "It has become something that almost everybody has to have."

Another billion PCs in 6 years

Gartner Dataquest calculates that the next billion PCs could ship far faster than the ones that came before. In 2008, the PC industry is projected to reach the milestone of two billion PCs, with the greatest growth opportunity coming from high-volume emerging markets in places such as China, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Intel believes that as technology goes increasingly global, the focus must remain on developing faster, more powerful processor technologies that users covet, while enabling "anytime, anywhere" computing and making PCs more intuitive and easier to use.

"Today, humans have to work with computers on the computers’ terms," explained Pat Gelsinger, Intel vice president and chief technology officer. "Tomorrow, we want to make computers work with humans on their terms. That vision includes developing PCs that can recognize speech, gestures and video, and it means achieving breakthroughs that will make the interaction between people and computers a truly immersive experience."

"Ultimately, we envision a world in which billions of people are seamlessly connected to the Internet, all the time and anywhere, with a rich set of services that are enabled by wireless technologies," Gelsinger said. "We see this model empowering people by providing them with compelling tools for social, cultural, economic and political change."

Gartner’s analysis of the one billion PC mark, which represents the combined desktop and laptop shipments of all chip and PC manufacturers worldwide, offers good cause for the industry to continue advancing the vision of computing.

"You’ve got to look at the computer as a power tool for the mind," Reynolds said. "In the industrial revolution, we learned how to take machines and leverage human physical effort to gain great economic advantage. The PC brings the same advantage to people’s minds."