Only Privacy Can Save The Tech Hardware Industry

Current Situation

The following graphs have been taken from Statista

Hardware Sales

As we see here, the industries that are consistently increasing their spending on IT hardware are

• Software Companies
• IT Service Companies

While Data-Center Systems are increasing their spends and haven't reduced since 2016

While the Consumer end products are in 'Overall Decline'

Here we can clearly see the current situation of Personal Computers Market

• There is a consistent downward trend in the market except for the 'Work From Home' scenario during the Pandemic

The overall Growth is in a downward direction.

Though we can't directly make the claim, but there is a pattern between the consumer market and the overall Semiconductor market.

The biggest growth we see is in the 'Hardware As A Service' market

While their prediction for the Consumer market is upward, the current situation is not as positive as their future prediction

Cloud Situation

Now, this industry is steadily increasing its spending thus clearly showing that the demand for Hardware As A Service is on the rise.

The first graph talks about the sudden jumps in spending, while this is about total spends in every year

Privacy Impact

Based on the above data, we can safely deduce that the current trend of the Tech industry is to create a centralized system where all the consumer data/applications are stored.

Thus clearly stating that the centralized system has access and control over the consumer data.

Now, I won't go into the privacy infringement examples or scenarios here, you can google that. But I think that I have made my point that access to the ability to make such infringements is on the Rise.

Hypothesis

The two are directly correlated

• Increase in Data / Application Centralisation
• Reduction in Personal Hardware requirement

The above correlation has a direct impact on Overall Tech Hardware Sales

Solution

If we want

• the hardware sales to not plummet and
• the overall consumer market to not suffer as a direct consequence

The only option is to increase the need for newer and better technology, not in terms of aesthetics like

• the new folding phone or
• artificially barricaded software like only updated for x amount of years even if the hardware is completely capable of updating.

So in order to do that, centralization is the main barrier.

If the same applications were to run directly on your system

• The hardware demand from your device would increase with every new technological breakthrough
• The main example right now is AI
• For eg. Nextcloud AI Apps for their On-Premise cloud solution would require the user to increase their Hardware resources
• Now, if these apps could be locally run within the OS without needing the Internet, except for updating the LLM, that would drastically increase the demand for a system that can handle such tasks.
• Similarly, many such applications could run on my device
• Thus making consumers want to upgrade
• Making innovation in hardware systems more appreciable in the consumer market

Outcome

• The consumer now doesn't upgrade for artificially generated requirements but rather for the genuine need for the system
• Since the data has to be computed and stored on the device, Privacy is a definite part of the model
• Consumers would still have the choice to choose between Cloud resources when they can't upgrade their device, but when they do, they don't have to rely on the internet to get the full solution within their device

If the consumer demand increases, well..

• It's great for the industry's (obviously shitty) bottom-line i.e. Profits
• It allows the Companies to focus on Innovation in the consumer market which is not limited to aesthetic design changes

Green Impact

I know, most companies don't care about this but

If, Right to Repair grows in Right to Upgrade, just as FairPhone and FrameWork do, these upgrades, while making the above possible, would also have a Lower Impact on Nature as a whole.

The reason being, the demand would not be artificial, based on Wants Created By 'Marketing'

But, rather the demand would be based on the Need Created By Technological Breakthroughs