IT industry '3rd Platform'

According to Gens ( Chief Analyst with IDC ), the ICT industry is in the midst of a 'once every 20 to 25 years' shift to a new technology platform for growth and innovation. IDC calls it the '3rd platform', and it is one that is built on mobile devices and applications, cloud services, mobile broadband networks, big data analytics and social technologies.

IDC defines the first platform as the mainframe computer, following by the second platform of the PC, which greatly impacted computing from 1985 to 2005.