Big names giving up on small computer market

There’s a flagrant contradiction between the popularity and the wide spread usage of small computers of all kinds on one hand, and on the other hand the need that users have for professional technical support for these products that are anything but simple. This is especially true for those who want to make the best out the devices and put to good use their countless functions.

Unfortunately today more than ever, small computers are falling into the consumer market segment, or “supermarket” segment should I say. And it’s not necessarily a good thing, apart from the fact that the supermarket connotation implies popular, easily accessible and inexpensive. The part that is not seen as being a good thing has to do, precisely, with quality technical support.

Back in 2005 IBM forsook its small computer business to concentrate on corporate server machines and expensive IT products intended for the lucrative enterprise segment. Obviously the small computer business had stopped being feasible or at least interesting enough for Big Blue. We know what happened; IBM laptops and desktop computers became Lenovo’s.

There were hints on the web this week that Hewlett-Packard was about to do more or less the same. Apparently the company would like to focus on big, enterprise machines and leave its “small business” to someone else, most likely under another brand name, just like IBM switched to Lenovo about ten years ago. There isn’t yet any confirmation or expected date for the move. Moreover, because HP is particularly renowned and appreciated for its wide range of printers and scanners for home and office, consumers are wondering if the change would include these peripherals or if it will only apply to laptops and desktop computers.

When two major players like IBM and HP decide to give up the small computer part of their business, one has the right to ask a few questions, and to have a few worries too.

Admitted, a laptop computer, for example, isn’t as complicated or difficult to operate and to maintain as a server computer. However, the complexity of networking and connectivity and the less-than-perfect operating system are a constant source of headache for users of personal devices. Not forgetting the constant updates that they hardly understand and anti-virus software that sometimes creates more issues than it actually addresses.

This leaves the vast majority of users, the non-technical population, either seeking technical help wherever they can find it, randomly, or desperately looking for solutions to their problems by searching the web and trying to understand and to apply the fix they sometime find, often in the form of cryptic YouTube video tutorials.

By giving up the small computer business they had run for years, manufacturers at the same time are also walking out on their users in a certain way, if only by denying them the kind of professional technical support they expect and are entitled to. Supermarkets just don’t provide pro tech support.

Shifting business sales to supermarket shelves comes at a price and with collateral damage. Reduced price means reduced technical support. Moving personal computing to supermarket shelves is not a new phenomenon per se. It has been going on for years now. It is, however, when big manufacturers stop using their original name that consumers feel they have been betrayed.

Again, the core issue here is that a small personal computer, a laptop, a smartphone, is not as simple as it may seem. How many smartphone owners can honestly say that they know, understand and use more than, say, one-third of the device possibilities and functions? How many are frustrated when they have a technical issue and have no one to turn to?

Whether it’s a big server computer or a humble smartphone, professional technical support is a must and a real need, albeit at different levels. Not all manufacturers will admit that.