Hardware providers: listen up! Your users need data Synchronization, and you need them to have it. You lost the Desktop market to Laptops. Users were given very few good reasons to have both. Without Sync, you’re going to lose the Laptop market to Tablets and Smartphones. I know software isn’t your job. But if you don’t sponsor or otherwise encourage OS creators to build this it’s going to affect your bottom line.
In the beginning, there was the desktop, and it was good. Then came Laptops and Notebooks. At first, these were luxury items owned only by enthusiasts and business travelers. In almost every case, the user had a more powerful more useful Desktop at the home or office that they relied on as well. Over time, Laptops became more prolific.
Instead of Laptops augmenting the Desktop experience, eventually, the “Desktop Replacement” Laptop was created and highly sought after. In 2008, Laptop sales were greater than Desktop sales, and now there is no looking back. Only the power users and businesses remain as Desktop customers, and even those markets are starting to dwindle.
Part of this shift is due to the increase in available power at an affordable price in mobile computing platforms. Laptops could do more than they could in previous years and offered portability, many consumers were left wondering what they needed a desktop for at all. However, many Desktop users would have happily continued using both if they had an easy, built-in, fool-proof way to ensure that the media, documents, and settings they needed would be there regardless if they were using their Desktop or Laptop. But even today, 3 years after the scales tipped, this is not simple. Documents are getting easier, though not without added monthly fees that not every user is willing to pay. But media and settings are still a long way off.
Now Smartphones and Tablets are knocking on the Laptops front door. Netbooks blur the line a bit, but not for long. The newest versions of Microsoft Windows and Mac OSx are “touch ready”. Tablets and Smartphones are getting more and more powerful and more and more capable. Some analysts predict that mobile internet users will surpass desktop internet users somewhere in the middle of 2013.
So, hardware manufacturer, how can you keep as many Laptop users as possible, encouraging them to maintain both devices instead of trying to replace their Laptop with their Tablets and Smartphones? Sync.
Sync needs to be offered to the user as soon as a new device is detected. The user needs the option for automated synchronization that does smart things like always provide a happy combination of the newest media and the most often used media. Seamless remote access to additional media is the best way to ensure that, even if automated Sync made the wrong choice, the user can still get the files they want. All of the new cloud services make this easier on developers than ever before but can also be expensive for the user. If external services cannot be made free in most cases, then a service on the desktop should fill the gap.
The bottom line is, get Syncing, or lose customers.