From reading the press, you would get the impression that the desktop is dying and that every deskop will be replaced with a mobile device soon. But this is a biased view on the numbers. Yes, PC sales are decreasing and the tablet market is growing. But there are explainable reasons for this transition.

• Home users
  Most private users don't do more than gaming, online banking, photo editing and archiving or tax returns on their computers. There are already very good apps for these tasks and a PC is not really required for these trivial applications.

• Second device
  A PC must not be replaced every year. Most users have a PC for higher tasks and get a tablet or smart phone as a second or third device. Because of the lower price of most tablets in comparison to PCs, more people are buying a computer who never had a PC before.

But what will happen with the desktop PC in our offices? Are we going to create invoices, maintain customer data or crunch numbers in ERP programs on mobile devices? Probably not. Of course, some tasks can be achieved in a different way while on the road. But as long as humans are involved in these processes, business applications require a desktop (laptops are counted as desktops).

Tablet PCs Are Getting Smaller

A very interesting number supports this theory: The number of mobile devices with a screen larger than 8-inch decreases. By 2017, 57% of all tablets will be smaller than 8-inch [IDC]. This shrinking of tablet sizes implies that the tablet will be a pure consumption device.

In the last years, applications already got split into different parts. TX Text Control Server is used to create documents server-side - triggered by a web application or an app on a tablet. Dashboard reports are visualized on tablets based on numbers that were maintained in powerful desktop applications such as SAP or Oracle.

Everyday business life can no longer be imagined without mobile devices. But does that mean that you need to port your thick-client application to an app? What you need is a mobile strategy and a smart combination of thick-client applications, the web and mobile apps.

Text Control Covers Both Desktop and Mobile / Server

Consider the TX Text Control reporting approach: In order to create a template, a Windows Forms or WPF application is used to provide the user a fully-featured interface. The report itself can be created on clients or servers and therefore, triggered by web applications or apps.

We are taking care of desktop developers, helping them to find the perfect strategy to cover all needs and user requirements. At the moment, Windows Forms and WPF is what developers use for Windows based business applications. But we are also investing development time into our ActiveX versions - because we know that a migration of legacy applications takes time.

In order to provide our users long lasting, future-oriented components, we are combining rock-solid Windows Forms or WPF technology with new requirements.