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PC Sales Slump Over Economic Crisis
nandemoari writes "The damage isn't just limited to the United States. Shipments of PCs in Europe, the Mid-East, and Africa dipped to records posted around the turn of the century. It was even worse in Asia, which according to Gartner, posted its worst growth rate ever — just 1.8 per cent.
Within the industry, desktops took the hardest hit, as was expected. Sales of non-portable computers were down about 16 per cent as consumers opted instead for the rising 'netbook' and similar hybrids. That fact alone is troubling for PC makers, given that $300-$500 netbooks offer a far lower profit margin than more expensive and more powerful laptops and desktops."
My company only buys refurb PCs off lease. $200 for a 2.8GHz P4 with 1GB of RAM. It is the only way I can keep up a 25% turn-over rate and stay under budget.
Bearded Dragon
Given the lack of perceiveable performance improvements over the past several years, there really isn't a need to upgrade your home PC. Back before the XBox (BX?) the PC was still a considerable factor in gaming. Today, the cost of a single video card almost justifies the cost of an XBox by itself. The internet connectivity on the gaming consoles, the video and audio streaming and the game selection/quality means that the 'need' for a gaming PC ($$$) is reduced, because the XBox or PS3 can do the same or better for less money.
To the best of my knowledge, aside from the MS Flight Simulator X program - is there a 'killer app' that will drive PC sales? The only reason I caveat MS Flight Simulator X as a PC game "Killer App" is because hours spent playing this game can be applied toward actual Flight School (under specific guidelines, planes and conditions).
People are probably just buying laptops...
Possibly. But my desktop is 5 yo and Mrs Smidge's desktop is going on 10...! The reason? We don't game, just appliance the heck out of it. No need to upgrade. Same thing with our vehicles, we just fix 'em and take xtra care with preventive maintenance.
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Only to a point -- The benefits of additional cores becomes less and less significant with the addition of more cores unless you're running multi-threaded applications -- and quite frankly, for consumer level software, there's not a lot floating around. I would wager more than four cores is probably a waste on a consumer PC.
Notebooks are getting smaller, and have longer battery life, and tend to break more often and often cost more than they are worth to fix, and WiFi is becoming pretty standard everywhere. Desktops are easy to fix (e.g. no need to buy a new one when I can just swap out the defective part), have been more powerful than the casual user has needed for a while now, and consumer confidence is very shaken with Windows Vista (which most users won't upgrade their 4-5 year old computer to use, or specifically is holding on to the old one to not "have" to upgrade), and linux tends to run very well on older hardware (sometimes even better than the latest and greatest if the driver support from the vendor sucks). I'm sure the economy has something to do with it, but has been slumping for quite a while now. The only one appearing to kick ass is Apple, and that is only because they are taking customers away from Dell/HP by having compelling features, Not Vista, more PC compatible, trendy, and if they have to upgrade anyway, might as well get what they want.
I read an article by Michael Dell (lost the URL) saying that the market is saturated in the US; as in there are no "first time buyers" except maybe for the kid going off to college and a lot are going Apple. Everyone who wants a PC already has one, and the manufacturers have done nothing to convince buyers they need a new box. Instead, they've made the machines suck more though inferior integrated parts, made them more difficult to upgrade, and loaded them with crapware to try to make a profit on a product that is already razor thin.
The second problem is that the "Windows" bundled applications like Windows Movie Maker are crappy compared to the iMovie/iDVD bundles on Macs, and the manufactuer ones like Dell-Movie Maker (or Dell DVD Player) are even worse than the Windows default ones. Users get "box shock" when they attempt to buy Off-the-Shelf software so they are really looking for a box that "does stuff" and is "known" for "doing stuff" not just being faster. On Apple, the bundled apps are either very simple to remove, or are fully-functional "free as in beer" includes; here PC manufactures to often include crippled, hard to remove, ugly, slow applications.
Saavy PC buyers remove all that crap and put a clean Windows install or Linux on there. The base consumer has no idea how to do that, and get a piece of crap for their hard earned money. The OEMs should really work to either make Linux ready for desktop primetime, or invest in OSS projects to produce, very good, very simple, portable to Windows if need be, very user friendly, very attractive, free desktop software rather than put together a crappy version, and get rid of all the crap running in the system tray for a clean, snappy system and stop blaming the economy for no one buying there stuff.
Netbooks are doing exactly this; running very efficent OS installs where if feels like the system was designed like a velvet glove over the hardware. Lowering the price and giving the buyer the features they want "size, power usage, WiFi, price." Not more GHz and more ram simply to feed a more hungry, more restrictive, more lackluster OS.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
So true. I have a Sun Sparc Station 5 running an vital role on my lan and it does its job day in and day out with no complaints. I also have a 2 dual p3 1.4 systems with 4GB a piece that same as the sparc run day in and day out. I got each machine for between 50 and 80 used. Why should I buy new when they work perfectly fine for use?
Unless I was unable to find a laptop that does what I need to do with a computer I don't see why I would go with a desktop. The price/performance difference is not what it used to be.
I could almost get away with using just my phone and a bigger screen and full size keyboard since most of what I do is ssh,email and web.
While I'm sure the recession has something to do with it, the fact of the matter is, unless you're a hard core gamer, or trying to run Vista, any computer bought in the last few years is "good enough."
Heck, I game quite a bit AND have the money, but why spend it replacing a perfectly good machine (which I got over three years ago)?
PCs now are far more powerful than Joe Sixpack needs to read his email and surf the web, so most people are probably fine with the ones they have. I doubt there are many households left that don't have a computer, so they have to justify replacing a functioning one now.
This is a given.
I don't know why anyone would question it.
What happens is people begin to get their computers fixed rather than getting a new computer, which is something they should have done all along. Most computers of yesterday are more than capable running today's software (with the exception maybe of Vista--which should have been a no-go to begin with).
Always fix rather than replace unless the computer is far too old. Any honest technician worth anything will be able to tell you that.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
They also have VGA-out ports, so problem solved.
In fact, even with my "full size" 15.4 inch laptop, I had a USB keyboard/mouse and 17inch monitor for when it was sitting on my desk, which was 95% of the time.
I think the issue here is that the industry is up against the wall in compelling reasons to upgrade... when you hit a certain mark, most sales are from people who already have computers. Perhaps those people are finally realizing that MSWord is not going to be any faster on a quad core than it is on a single core, and they've stopped wasting their money.
The only people buying $500.00 video cards for $3000 quad-core powerhouse desktops are professionals or kids playing video games with more time and money than brains.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I know a LOT of people deciding not to buy new computers because they only have Vista. Most people come and ask me if I can put XP on it after they buy it. And frankly, doing that is getting increasingly more difficult because OEMs are changing their part numbers and PCI IDs so their XP drivers don't want to install on the same devices. If I were better at hacking the installers, I would just run a PCI scan and add those numbers to whatever files are needed, but getting them to install without modification is becoming increasingly difficult.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This year MS did pretty much nothing and there was very little motivation to buy anything new. Apple had not announced anything amazing for at least a year now.
Therefore sales drop off. Wow: who'd have thought that?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Most of us have PCs already, and with reliability getting tolerable, thank goodness, most PC sales are upgrades, no? It is a luxury purchase; a good investment of some extra money. No extra money or a frugal conscience will lead to postponement of such purchases - especially for corporations.
I still disagree with the interpretation that sales are falling. Sales are not growing isn't sales decline... Maybe less than expected, but still, it is not a decline. 1.8% growth is not a decline. My height not growing doesn't mean I am shrinking.
Maybe people just don't want a 100lb system when they can get something that fits in their pocket. I just got an iPod Touch to use as a pocket computer (it works nicely and I'll really like it when I figure out how to write programs for it), and now my wife wants one too. She'll probably get one of those cute Acer netbooks for $400 too as they look handy to throw in the diaper bag for times you need to run a Windows program on the go.
The vast majority of the time we just want web and email access or to make some notes and keep track of our check book, shopping list, etc. For those even a laptop is to much. The iPod is really optimal. To bad they made it such a pain to write apps for - I have to upgrade my OS and pay $100 to become a developer and use Apple's own pet language it seems (or jailbreak it which is also a pain).
The iPhone would be good but $80+ a month seems a lot and we don't like AT&T. If they could give it some competition then I'd be really interested. They need a 32GB model of the iPhone too though. 16GB just isn't enough.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.