You are leaving out an important piece to this illustration. Companies figured out they could make more money...lots more money...if they sold personal PC's instead of mainframes. It is not necessarily the customer that lead this innovation, but the industry striving for a profit.
Sorry, but this is bull-shit. Companies never ever intended for a PC to replace mainframes or workstations. It just happened. First personal computers were created by hobbysts and small companies to be a toy (AppleI, Commandore, etc) and then when it become obvious that it's huge market and it's possible to do some business processing with these toys big companies followed.
A lot of companies perished in transition exactly because they believed money are in manframes or smaller, but still "big" iron.
You are all failing to understand the key point that the meaning of the word computer has drastically changed since that forecast. And whole new options opened up. At the time there was no idea they could have guis, or mice. No idea they could usefully replace typewriters let alone printing and books or even forums. They were just esoteric things, difficult to operate, for doing calculations and a few boring business tasks.
Don't forget the famous comment by Ken Olsen, President of Digital Equipment Corp. (now rolled into Compaq which was rolled into HP): "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home"
You are leaving out an important piece to this illustration. Companies figured out they could make more money...lots more money...if they sold personal PC's instead of mainframes. It is not necessarily the customer that lead this innovation, but the industry striving for a profit.
Sorry, but this is bull-shit. Companies never ever intended for a PC to replace mainframes or workstations. It just happened. First personal computers were created by hobbysts and small companies to be a toy (AppleI, Commandore, etc) and then when it become obvious that it's huge market and it's possible to do some business processing with these toys big companies followed.
A lot of companies perished in transition exactly because they believed money are in manframes or smaller, but still "big" iron.
You are all failing to understand the key point that the meaning of the word computer has drastically changed since that forecast. And whole new options opened up. At the time there was no idea they could have guis, or mice. No idea they could usefully replace typewriters let alone printing and books or even forums. They were just esoteric things, difficult to operate, for doing calculations and a few boring business tasks.
Don't forget the famous comment by Ken Olsen, President of Digital Equipment Corp. (now rolled into Compaq which was rolled into HP): "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home"