Laptops Hang Around.

There’s always the need to throw the baby out with the bathwater where technology is concerned. For example, reports are now saying the sales of clock radios are down as people use their smartphones to wake them, and even the MP3 player ( so popular just a short time ago ) is now all but forgotten as BlackBerry’s and iPhones sweep the market

However, there seems to be at least one bastion of the tech world that appears unshakeable and that’s the personal computer. Prosper Mobile Insights has put together some interesting stats that all point to the fact the personal computer is as popular and unshakeable as the family dog. The recent numbers fielded by the company find that 56% of mobile customers still use their home computer to logon to the Internet even though they have the mobile device as well.

It seems that one of the sticking points is not the consumer friendliness of these mobile devices but rather the cost of some of the data plans involved. There are even reports that 4G will see yet another spike in cost at least temporarily. Still the overall trend toward the smartphone can’t be denied. Along with those people who are turning away from things like traditional alarm clocks and GPS devices for their smartphones, 44% of the respondents have reported they are using these in place of digital cameras. Still, at least for now laptops are hanging around.

There’s more recent news that concerns Millennials as well—namely that another survey clearly points to the fact they would be shopping online more if the opportunity existed within the confines of Facebook. Almost 40% of this generation said they would use the popular social media platform if it offered more opportunity to shop and those numbers compare with 26% of Gen Xers and 16% of Boomers. Business needs to start listening. The move has been on for time now toward IT for some time now as the favored medium to get the message out on goods and services and the younger generation have something to say about what they buy and how they buy it. Here’s another interesting statistic to consider. Forty eight per cent of that group says they would prefer their favorite brands advertise on Facebook.

It seems that watching the trends developing continually on the Internet is good, but taking too much stock in any one of them when you’re in business needs to be tempered with a cautious approach. Remember while mobile applications are taking off and social media is the way younger people want to shop, everyone still seems to want to make sure they have a home computer handy as a foundation.