I wrote a “post-PC-era survival guide” almost two years ago. The piece was inspired by Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco where Steve Jobs declared, “We are going to demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device. We are going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud.”

I discussed how Apple, Google and Microsoft were approaching the cloud. That summer, Brad Inman, founder of Inman News, discussed the post-PC world during his keynote address at Real Estate Connect in San Francisco. He discussed how the post-PC-era was going to reshape the real estate industry and how mobile devices were projected to outsell personal computers.

Fast forward to April 10, 2013. IDC (International Data Corporation) announced that PC sales plummeted 14 percent this quarter, which is the largest decline and worst quarter recorded since the organization began tracking sales in 1994. IDC was forecasting only a 7.7 percent decline. Obviously this is much worse.

“Although the reduction in shipments was not a surprise, the magnitude of the contraction is both surprising and worrisome,” said David Daoud, IDC research director for personal computing. “The industry is going through a critical crossroads, and strategic choices will have to be made as to how to compete with the proliferation of alternative devices and remain relevant to the consumer.”