Could the PC eventually disappear?

Saw a piece this morning about a group of women from West Va. who pooled their money and won a $247 million jackpot in Powerball lottery.

Seems like a lot of money - but that’s chicken feed compared with what mobile search is going to generate, according to this new report from Juniper Research.

That’s $4.8 billion with a “B” in the next five years. All from people looking up stuff on their handsets.

The article also goes into how that money is going to be generated, and of most interest are the gradual reduction in the “walled garden” (which will be a combination of easier-to-use devices and the service providers losing control of what people want to do with their phones, novel concept I know). Also of note - the cost of data will be coming down or offered at a flat rate.

Not that phones are ever going to replace PCs, but as search is taking over as a major function of any computer, are we going to see a tipping point of PCs to phones over the next five years? Are people going to be willing to shell out $400-500 for a decent smartphone that can search, see flash pages, browse the Net, type e-mails or text msgs, and talk with their friends - and forego $1,000 for a laptop and another $25-30 a month for high-speed connections. Not to mention the added coming bonus of having that search linked to your location by your phone.

As I stated in a previous post (actually my first ever post), there is already anecdotal proof that this has happened in Asia, and especially Japan.

 Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that Google and Yahoo! are girding their loins to take on mobile. Just wait until Android (Google’s new mobile operating system) and its accompanying tie-in to AdSense really starts taking hold. 

 Addendum (added later in the day): Google is noticing the uptick as well.

“We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage,” Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, said in an interview with Reuters (run on the CNET Web site). “We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating.”