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Half a Billion PCs To Ship In 2013, As Desktops and Laptops Dip But Tablets Grow

Posted by Soulskill on from the should-keep-the-lights-on-for-another-year dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The PC market (desktops, notebooks, and tablets) is expected to see almost half a billion units ship this year, 493.1 million to be exact, representing 7 percent year-on-year growth. Unsurprisingly, the key driver behind this growth will be tablets, accounting for 37 percent of the overall market and seeing 59 percent growth to 182.5 million units. The latest estimates come from Canalys, an independent analyst firm. Nevertheless, it's worth emphasizing that these are estimates, though they do line up with what the broader industry is seeing: desktops are down, laptops are down, but tablets are up."

9 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Hooray for the PC market! by telchine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And who said PCs are dying? Easy to solve that problem...

    All we need to do is redefine what a PC is (desktops, notebooks, and tablets)!

    Problem Solved!

    Simples!

    1. Re:Hooray for the PC market! by InvalidError · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Every time they say "the PC is dying", they conveniently neglect to specify form factors.

      Few people need the encumberment and expansion potential of traditional 'tower' form factor so an increasingly large chunk of the market will be looking at non-traditional form factors for their next PC. Also, since there hasn't been much performance improvements on CPUs over the past four years, most people who already own a tower or laptop have little to no reason to upgrade those and choose to get tablets instead for convenience.

      Based on the proliferation of touch-enabled LCDs with embedded PCs, it seems like the old Tablet-PC concept that miserably failed about 10 years ago is coming back to life with a vengeance... if it gets priced right on this round.

    2. Re:Hooray for the PC market! by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 5, Insightful

      True but I'll never give up my PC/Desktop. Laptops are still underpowered for what you pay and no where near as upgradable. Plus the keyboards are crap generally with most smaller than standard (and I could actually use larger than standard if it was readily available).I end up docking the thing, attaching an external monitor, and external keyboard and mouse. They have their uses but when I'm sitting at a desk, ie ~9hrs a day at work and another couple at home I'd rather have something that wasn't specifically designed for portability over functionality.

    3. Re:Hooray for the PC market! by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 1, Insightful

      About a 2.4X improvement actually (http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+860+%40+2.80GHz) at the same clock newer i7s are much faster. That said I think the thing is most people are disk I/O limited they feel the lag between clicking open to when the app pops up the rest of things (other than say transcoding and other niche users like developers) the delay in their thought/typing is more of the slow down than the speed of response of the app. The problem is SSDs are expensive so most people don't want to buy them. They'll turn you $500 walmart special into a $2000 beast by the time you get 1.5TB or so of SSD into it. Sadly most users are used to fairly powerful desktop computers costing the price of a decent tablet so getting them to cough up 4X in order to fix the IO issue and have the storage they are used to (and probably have filled already on their old box) is a hard sell.

    4. Re:Hooray for the PC market! by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Well I'd count Windows tablets. The whole point of the surface pro and the like is you can run real Windows apps and get real work done. iPads and androids I won't because they really are just large screen cellphones, useful but generally never going to see a real keyboard or get docked and used as the office work computer. Surface Pro definitely could.

  2. Geek Savior by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Millions of geeks saddled with supporting family and friends who have no business getting near a general purpose computer, celebrate the advent of tablets for browsing/email/casual gaming.

  3. Re:Sacrifice the kids (was Re:Geek Savior) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Blaming tablets for your failure to inspire your kid to be a 'creator'. Typical American Parent(tm)

    There are plenty of ways for kids to tinker on an iPad, first hit Googling http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/

  4. A "proper computer"? by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A PC is a proper computer

    A "proper computer"? A tablet or a smartphone or even a pocket calculator are proper computers. They are all general purpose computers with a CPU, RAM and storage. I agree with your premise that the market segmentation matters between tablets and PCs but they are both "proper computers" by any reasonable definition. The only real difference between them is the software that determines the interface. You could easily take the tablet and put a mouse and keyboard on it just like you could take a PC and put a touchscreen on it. The segments matter because they are optimized for particular uses right now but the segments are going to converge over time. The line between a tablet and a PC is going to blur and Google, Apple and Microsoft have already started the process.

  5. "PCs" are now "workstations" (again) by emblemparade · · Score: 4, Insightful

    PCs are, as many of us agree, not dying, but they are changing and becoming a niche product -- again.

    The term "personal computer" was in a way a misnomer, because personal computers existed before: we called them "workstations", and at the time they were quite a revolution, because we could do whatever we wanted with them instead of sharing computing time on Unix boxen, VAX, or mainframes. They were also super expensive, enough that they were not worth the money except for specific tasks where computing independence was absolutely required,

    The "personal computer" revolution should really have been called the "small office computer" or "home computer" revolution: these were new kinds of "workstations" that were cheap enough that we could buy them for ... small offices and homes.

    I predict that we're moving back in time, in a way. Most consumers would prefer tablets and similar devices. For those of us that need serious computing power, we will still have our computers to buy. But they will likely be targeted and priced accordingly for the "prosumer" market. It would be easy to buy a cheap tablet, but forget about cheap laptops: manufacturers won't make them because they won't sell well. Instead, they'll focus on premium desktop computers for premium users.

    So let's call them "workstations" again. Meanwhile the term "personal computer" may finally make perfect sense for phones and tablets: truly "on-person" computers.