PC Industry Fights to Adapt as Tablets Muscle In

Like the mainframe, which was said to be dead decades ago but has remained a meaningful business, the PC will almost certainly cheat death. True, mobile devices like the iPad will continue to gore PC sales. Those mobile devices, though, will most likely never satisfy spreadsheet masters, film editors and other workers who depend on multiple screens and the precision of a keyboard and mouse.

Still, there is a strong view among many longtime tech executives that the PC’s relevance will steadily diminish.

“In my humble opinion, the PC as we have known it is in a continuous decline and being relegated to a utility device for businesses,” said Hector Ruiz, the former chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices, a company that makes chips for PCs and other devices.

The mood around the PC industry has become increasingly glum. The business is effectively in a recession, and there is no upturn in sight. During the second quarter of the year, global PC shipments fell around 11 percent, for their fifth consecutive quarter of declines, the worst downturn since the advent of the PC more than 30 years ago.

Intel, supplier of the chips in most PCs, and Microsoft, which makes the Windows operating system on the vast majority of those machines, have delivered disappointing financial results. An overhaul of Microsoft’s software, Windows 8, did not lift sales and may have made them worse.

The once-mighty Dell, deeply weakened by the PC slump, is mired in a struggle with shareholders over a plan to go private, seeking relief from investor pressure. In their bid to take the company private, Michael S. Dell, the founder, and the investment firm Silver Lake have argued that they would turn the company into a corporate software services provider. A vote on Dell’s future is expected this week.

While sales of PCs to businesses remain steady, demand among consumers has plunged, largely because people are instead buying iPads, Kindle Fires and other tablets.

Still, a reality check: more than 300 million PCs are expected to be shipped this year globally. That is a lot of widgets for a business that has caught a cold.

Tablet sales are growing explosively. This year, there are expected to be more than 200 million shipments of the devices, which will for the first time exceed shipments of notebooks, the largest category of PCs, estimates Gartner, the research firm.

Steven P. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who died in 2011, predicted several years ago that PCs would become something like trucks, workhorses used by many people but outnumbered by tablets, the cars of the technology business. (The analogy is somewhat undercut by stats: the most popular vehicle in the United States for several years has been a truck, the Ford F-150.)

One theory is that tablets are leading PC shoppers to postpone purchases of new computers, perhaps by a year or two, but that eventually people will be ready for a fresh machine. “Replacement cycles are being pushed out,” said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein Research.

A more pessimistic view is that a lot of the consumer demand for PCs will never return. Daniel Huttenlocher, the dean and vice provost of Cornell University’s new New York City technology campus, said consumers began buying PCs in big numbers beginning in the 1990s largely because no better device existed for getting on the Internet.

But the PC, he said, was always better suited as an office machine for the production of documents, presentations and other work. In his view, tablets are better for the consumption of content, whether that is watching Netflix or surfing the Web.

“There are way more consumers than producers, period, even in a world with lots of user-generated content,” Dr. Huttenlocher said.

In the first quarter, 53 percent of computer shipments were to the consumer market while 47 percent were to the commercial market, estimates the research firm IDC.

Apple Fights Back in E-Book Antitrust Case

That is one of several factors that seem to be motivating Apple’s vigorous defense against a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit accusing the company of conspiring with five of the largest publishing houses to fix prices on electronic books, according to people close to the case.

Unlike the five publishers, all of which have settled the case, filed in April 2012, Apple is aggressively disputing the government’s assertions that Apple and the publishers wanted to force Amazon, which controlled 90 percent of the e-book market before Apple entered it, to raise its prices, according to court papers filed this week. A trial is scheduled to begin June 3 in Federal District Court in New York.

Among other defenses, Apple says that both Amazon and the publishing companies were already contemplating a move to a different pricing model in 2009, before Apple entered the e-book business. Apple cites one Amazon executive who referred in an e-mail to the idea that Amazon got publishers to accept what it wanted all along as “Jedi mind tricks.”

Apple, whose 2010 introduction of the iPad corresponded with its opening of a digital bookstore, denies that it tried to convince publishers to enforce a regime that would allow them to set their own retail prices for books, above the $9.99 price that Amazon was then charging.

In addition, Apple says that the Justice Department has selectively edited and distorted e-mails between executives of Apple and the publishers.

“Apple injected much-needed competition and innovation into the e-book business,” said Orin Snyder, a lawyer at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher who represents Apple. “The DOJ’s case is based on fictions and incomplete quotations. The actual evidence proves that Apple did not conspire to fix prices in the e-book business. We look forward to trial.”

The Justice Department accuses Apple of its own selective quotation. And, it said, the evidence shows that the publishing companies threatened to withhold books unless Amazon allowed them to set higher prices and that Apple “encouraged them to do so.”

Apple seems particularly peeved about the government invoking e-mails of its former chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, to assert its case, saying the government’s selective editing of those e-mails deliberately distorts Mr. Jobs’s intentions.

The government’s court papers quote from an e-mail that Mr. Jobs sent on Jan. 24, 2010, to James Murdoch, who as head of News Corporation oversaw its publishing company, HarperCollins. That was three days before the introduction of the iPad, as Apple was furiously negotiating deals with publishers that would allow it to introduce its bookstore on the same day.

Apple says the government left out of its papers the fact that Mr. Jobs said Amazon might have the right price for e-books already, at $9.99. “Maybe they are right and we will fail,” Mr. Jobs wrote.

Taken in total, Apple said, the e-mail “shows a new entrant with no market power proposing an alternative business model to HarperCollins, and candidly recognizing that Apple has no power to predict or influence other retailers,” Apple said in pretrial papers.

Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester who follows the publishing industry, said Apple still has a relatively small share of the e-book market.

“Even though they have a big brand, their actions have had relatively little impact on the overall industry,” Ms. Rotman Epps said.

Since Apple’s entry, e-book prices have gone down, the company said, with the average retail price of an electronic book falling 63 cents since April 2010, from $7.97 to $7.34.

Michael Cader, the creator of Publishers Lunch, an industry publication, said there were multiple ways of interpreting what had happened to e-book prices since the start of Apple’s iBookstore. He said at least part of the decline might reflect the exponential growth in older books, self-published books and books from an array of small and digital-only publishers, many of which are often sold for as little as 99 cents to $3.

Edward Wyatt reported from Washington, and Brian X. Chen from San Francisco.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 18, 2013

An article on Friday about Apple’s battle with the Justice Department over charges of price-fixing on e-books characterized incorrectly a comment by Michael Cader, of the industry publication Publishers Lunch, on the decline in e-book prices. He speculated that the growth in older books, self-published books and books from small and digital publishers might account for part of the decline; he did not state that as a fact.

Moscow Journal: Russian Web Site Roszkh Fights Corruption Through Housing

In a city where it is often impossible to get a plumber or any other repairman, somebody just figured out how to fix the pipes — and replace light bulbs, scrub off graffiti and patch leaky roofs. Throughout Moscow and other Russian cities, such elementary building repairs are suddenly in full swing as the city’s craftsmen, their reputations for surliness, laziness and drunkenness undiminished, are hurrying from one appointment to another.

Delighted Muscovites are crediting a new Web site for the unaccustomed Calvinist work ethic. Called Roszkh, it streamlines the process for filing complaints about maintenance of the communal areas of apartment buildings, like hallways and entryways, that remained public property after post-Soviet privatizations.

Stymied by a loss of momentum after street protests, Russian opposition leaders had been casting about for other approaches to remain relevant through what promises to be a long tenure for President Vladimir V. Putin. Aleksei Navalny, a blogger and political activist, hit upon the idea of the Web site, which is run under the auspices of his Foundation for Fighting Corruption.

“It’s difficult to say when the next wave of protests will come,” Mr. Navalny said in an interview about his new site, named after an acronym Russians use for their combined utility and building maintenance bills, ZhKKh.

Roszkh was an instant sensation. Since the site went up on Nov. 8, 28,354 users have filed 45,835 complaints, mostly in Moscow and other large cities. So far, repairmen have fixed about 2,600 reported problems. That may not sound like much, but in Russia it qualifies as extraordinary.

“I live in an old five-story building where the hallway has no light and no windows,” one Muscovite, Boris Frantskevich, wrote in a post. It seemed it would be that way forever. But on a lark, he tried logging a complaint on the Web site.

“Just today, I walk out of my apartment and an electrician is digging in the wires,” Mr. Frantskevich wrote. “Wow, he’s fixed the light.”

Mr. Navalny attributes the site’s success to official sensitivities to a deep vein of public anger over the deplorable state of housing in Russia, and particularly in Moscow. In a leaked letter, Russia’s chief housing inspector issued an order that the complaints on Mr. Navalny’s Web site be addressed immediately.

The inspector, Nikolai Vasyutin, clarified the government response in a letter to subordinates: Applicants needed to be helped immediately, not in spite of the site’s political character, but because of it.

“It’s become obvious this is a policy by the opposition to discredit all levels of the government,” the letter said. “But this shouldn’t confuse the organs of the state housing inspection.” It instructed city officials to counteract the tactic by fixing problems quickly.

Public opinion surveys indicate that the steady rise in ZhKKh fees is the issue that upsets Russians most; a planned increase was delayed during presidential elections last winter, only to kick in this year.

The fees have been rising faster than inflation. Many Russians are incensed about paying more — currently about $130 a month in Moscow, and less in other cities — while hallways, even in upscale buildings, are often yawning black tunnels, splattered with graffiti and reeking of septic odors.

These problems have become a vulnerability for Mr. Putin, but one largely of his own making. The governing political party, United Russia, went to great pains to ensure that it dominated not only national but also regional and local politics, often suppressing opponents to do so. The party also dominates city councils.

As Mr. Navalny, a former real estate lawyer, has been gleefully pointing out, this means that every broken light bulb and burst pipe is now the party’s problem.

“We are trying to attract people who can fight corruption together with us,” Mr. Navalny said. “It’s clear that an ordinary person has a hard time helping us fight corruption at Gazprom,” the big state energy company. “But unfortunately in Russia, corruption surrounds a person everywhere. We are trying to create a mechanism for people to fight corruption themselves.”

The site asks users to enter their address and choose from a menu of common Russian repair problems: water flowing a rich orange color from rusted pipes, say, or a boiler failing in midwinter.

The program then automatically pastes on a lengthy legal text composed by Mr. Navalny and his volunteer group of lawyers for the benefit of the receiving bureaucrat, citing ordinances that mandate a response or repair, usually within 45 days.

The site automatically routes complaints to the appropriate municipal authority in thousands of cities in Russia’s 83 regions. So far, though, Muscovites and residents of a few other large cities where Internet use is high have filed most of the complaints.

The site is easy to use. It saves profiles, allowing angry Russians to return whenever they have another leaky pipe or a new buildup of filth in a hallway.

In St. Petersburg, building inspectors initially declined to respond to several thousand complaints generated on the site. Whether that was for political reasons or out of laziness remains unclear.

But by early December, the office was working overtime to fix communal areas, and a housing maintenance official had been arrested for mismanagement, one of several moves by the government in an apparent effort to get ahead of the issue.

Even as complaints pile up, site moderators urge users to keep on filing.

One man, Sergei Sadko, wrote that an entire delegation of city officials promptly visited his apartment after he complained about a leaky roof.

“They said they would fix it in the spring,” he wrote. “Should I change my status to ‘problem solved’?”

The response: “File another complaint. They are required to fix everything immediately.”