“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
Almost seven decades later, in 2007, Steve Jobs popularized the idea of the post-PC era. He predicted a shift to mobile devices as our primary method of computing, while the usefulness of computers would steadily decline until they eventually became obsolete. The idea caught on widely in tech circles, and the sales figures appeared to support it. Between 2007 to 2013, tablet and smartphone sales worldwide skyrocketed, whereas PC sales basically flat lined and then slumped.