For ages now analysts have been talking about the “mobile boom”. They claim that consumers are ditching their PCs in favour of smartphones and tablets. They point to falling PC sales as proof. The IT companies have also agreed, Acer fired Gianfranco Lanci for failing to see the mobile boom and AMD got rid of its CEO Dirk Meyer for the same reason. Even Chipzilla has admitted that it failed to see the mobile boom coming. Meanwhile, its rival ARM, which designs all those mobile chips, has been laughing all the way to the bank.

However the whole thing is a brilliant piece of illusion which can be explained by a fairly unique combination of factors. It all started when Steve Job's iPhone was a surprise success. Smartphones had been around for ages but no one had made them anything more than something to relieve executive stress. Jobs gave them to a legion of fanboys who wanted them to replace their iPod fad. Smartphone interest did grow beyond the iPhone. RIM got an initial boost and then there was that Android thing. However given the amount of interest generated in the press you would have expected everyone to have been buying a smartphone. Part of this is that analysts and the industry has been looking at issues like market share. It has been reporting about RIM falling, and Apple and Android gaining. Certainly we have seen Apple, HTC and Samsung doing very well, but the old phones are still outstripping smartphones worldwide and this is likely to remain so for at least another five years.

Figures from IMS Research smartphone sales will be a billion by 2016, which is not bad but still overshadowed by normal phones. There is little chance that smartphones will be able to replace the PC. The best those machines will be good for are portable maps, checking email, sms and occasionally calling someone, maybe with some voice added. So what of tablets? When Jobs launched them they were hyped to hell. At the time I admit I did not believe that people were so stupid to pay so much for a keyboardless netbook. I played with a tablet for a weekend and got bored with it. Using one without a keyboard was like trying write a news story when your left hand. As a mate of mine pointed out, “touch screens are useless... you can't use them for anything when you are pissed”, or sober either. But the fact that Apple manages to sell them has nothing to do with the fact that the technology is a “game changer”. Apple has only really been able to sell its tablets to wealthy Americans. If Jobs had really managed to change our lives then Tablets made by other vendors would be selling too. And they are not.

Despite a limited amount of technology involved, only Samsung has managed to get a bit of dosh out of tablets. IMS Research claims it was because outfits were unable to capitalise on the technology fast enough. However the technology is not new and it could have been in the shops quickly. It wasn't and when it was available, people ignored it. But still the press and the IT companies carried on as if tablets were going to save them. The IT press was full of stories that tablets were cannibalising first netbooks and then PCs. All PC makers are reporting that sales of PCs are down, particularly to consumers in developed countries. Does this mean that they are turning mobile computers and tablets? Er, no.

If you look at PC sales, they have been slow in Europe and, to a lesser extent the US. Both regions have been suffering from a recession. Consumers are not buying hardware. The home PC works fine and there is no need to upgrade it. This fact is re-enforced by the fact that Windows XP is still under the bonnet of half the world's PCs. The figures make it clear that those PCs are still being used. They are making net connections which is how analysts can track them. If consumers were turning to smartphones and tablets they would be using these instead. The fact that tablets is selling well in the US is because that is Apple's home ground. Its fanboys would buy anything with a fruity logo, and thanks to the Ipod, Jobs has managed to get a fanatical core of followers.

In Europe people are not buying anything. It is not surprising. Ireland, Italy, Spain, Greece and the UK are worried about debt problems. What are they going to do? Buy a PC or worry about paying the credit card bill? If the business market is doing anything, they are keeping old PCs but doing clever things like cloud or network connections. True some are under pressure to make more mobile connections but you can't run business software on a tablet. What happens when the economies pick up is anyone's guess. There might be enough hype to push everyone into tablets and kick start a real mobile push. But at the moment the mobile boom is only an Apple craze.