Technology is a place of many revolutions. Right now, one of the big ones is mobile. If you set the way back machine to 2006, some business people sent emails from their phones. Some people texted and almost no one used a phone to go to websites. Now, people do it all from their phones and a lot of people are buying tablets.

The catch about technology revolutions is that you only realize how big they are when they’re done. Saying people go to websites on their phones doesn’t really capture it. Saying mobile is King begins to catch it. Saying that good web designers will design for phones and tablets first begins to get it. Saying ignoring mobile shuts out half your audience begins to get it. Yes half. Half now.

For about a quarter of a century, the majority of computers out there were PC’s running Windows. A while back a lot of people switched to laptops. But, they kept using Windows.

That’s the blue in the chart. Correction: that’s the blue area that’s vaporizing on the right side of the chart.

The point at which the blue started dropping like a rock? The introduction of the iPhone. A little while later, Android phones were introduced. Not too long after that Windows market share went into free fall. Tablets like the iPad haven’t helped the Windows situation any.

In terms of numbers, 352.8 million PCs (according to Gartner estimates) were sold worldwide last year. Next year that number will drop while Apple and Samsung alone will sell almost that many smart phones and tablets.

Laptops and Desktops won’t completely die anytime soon but they’re no longer driving the game. There are specific industries and certain jobs were they’ll still be important for some time to come. But, for many people, the PC is increasingly irrelevant.

Credits: image from market tracker Horace Dediu’s Asymco blog via GigaOM.