As I look around my coffee shop, an array of mostly Apple laptops are browsing cloud-based social sites and services: About half are Facebook, the rest a spattering of Gmail, YouTube, and Twitter. In fact, of the dozens of LCD screens in my view, only one is displaying a UI not instantly recognizable as a Web service--though I'm guessing AutoCAD. This lone creative professional is an important subject, and one I'll come back to later.

Whether they realize it or not, the typical PC user has already embraced the cloud, storing their data on remote servers so it is accessible anywhere, from any device. Using services like Google Docs and Google Calendar when you own multiple Net-connected devices is simply matter of convenience. Not needing offline storage of data is the first step in smartphone dominance.

According to a study by ComScore, by December 2010 , and this number continues to grow. But despite their growing popularity and easy access to cloud-based data, there are a few limiting factors that make smartphones a secondary device to the PC.