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PC Sales See 'Longest Decline' In History
dryriver writes "Global personal computer (PC) sales have fallen for the fifth quarter in a row, making it the 'longest duration of decline' in history. Worldwide PC shipments totalled 76 million units in the second quarter, a 10.9% drop from a year earlier, according to research firm Gartner. PC sales have been hurt in recent years by the growing popularity of tablets. Gartner said the introduction of low-cost tablets had further hurt PC sales, especially in emerging economies. 'In emerging markets, inexpensive tablets have become the first computing device for many people, who at best are deferring the purchase of a PC,' said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a statement."
The PC is doomed, blah blah blah. All the grandma's are buying tablets. Anyone who does any real work are buying PC's or already have what they need. Nothing to see here.
Tablets now fall under the umbrella of being a PC. BAM! Problem fixed... no more PC sales decline.
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
Computers made in the last 5 or so years are darn fast, and unless you are a hard core gamer, will be plenty fast for the next 5-10 years. I just built my father a modern computer in the hopes he won't need a new one for about 10 years.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
For some reason, there still remains this weird claddistic requirement that "pc's" (ie desktops, I guess?), laptops, and other devices be all conceptualized in separate boxes. Or, it could just be that the companies that are paid to do this sort of info gathering (and sorting) aren't changing as fast as technology...?
PC stands for 'personal computer', at least it did.
The laptop was the evolution of the desktop into a more broadly useful form factor.
The smartphone, and the pad device are precisely the same thing - just other points on the spectrum, not a whole different genus of computer.
That said, then, if one were to include the counts of all such devices that have the computing power and utility of a desktop even as short as 10 years ago, I hardly believe that the "PC market" is in decline.
One might even wonder then what the agenda is for such a naked contrivance to present the situation in such a gloomy light might be?
-Styopa
The PC is here to stay. What we are seeing is a longer life cycle. There is no need to update the hardware these days, there's plenty of power and storage for people writing the odd letter/email, social media and most games. Unless you're a developer or working with huge amounts of media data, PC users aren't going to notice a shit load of RAM, loads of cores CPU and a GPU capable of real-time Avatar level of rendering.
No mention of the fact that Intel and Microsoft are still bleeding customers on gross margins of 70%. Computers have to compete against other computing devices, and they are not doing so on price. Windows 8 being a tablet OS is the nail in the coffin.
it has everything to do with smartphones and tablets
a family needs only 1 PC in the now. but a smartphone or tablet for every member on average. lots of kids starting around 9 get their own smartphones. earlier than that for ipads
The main reason for the decline of PC sales is that PC's have gotten to the point where their useful life is far longer than it used to be. Other than bleeding edge gamers and enthusiasts, there is just no need to upgrade as often as people once did. The same applies more or less to businesses.
Nearly every person I know who owns a smartphone and/or a tablet also has some sort of PC. I really don't think the portable device boom is the culprit here.
So why pick a more expensive & less mobile PC?
That is a truly misguided statement. Here's a better one:
"Consumers use touch screens. Producers use keyboards."
Good luck using a tablet for tasks such as Photoshop or Blender. Heck, even using a tablet to type out a proper letter could be classified as cruel and inhumane.
The era of the PC is not over... only the era of the PC as an entertainment device.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
What worries me is that if the PC market can't continuing making profit off volume sales, the prices of a computer (or its components) will go up. I'm still on core 2 due (hey, still works), and waiting for it to die so I can build something with 8-core.
At the end of the day, we just need fewer PCs than we used to:
- People can do their "consumption" media (browsing, videos, etc) on tablets or phones. Don't need a PC for that.
- People who use PCs for work have no reason to upgrade them as often as they used to, as the machines last for years and real world performance gains in hardware have slowed to a trickle. When most of my software is single-threaded, upgrading from dual core to quad core (or more) does absolutely nothing for me.
- Even gamers don't need to upgrade that often, as requirements have stopped going up unless you want the ultra quality mode. A three year old gaming PC can still play everything new at high quality, and that's never been the case in the past.
Add it all up, and we need fewer PCs today than we used to need. The ones we do need last longer than they used to. The market isn't going to go away, but it is going to become a lot smaller.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The main reasons that sales are dropping...
Everybody that needs one has one, and they work well enough. Very few people need the latest and greatest
The various different activation and protection schemes make it a royal pain to upgrade
I used to buy new hardware frequently, and just clone my hard drive
Now, I hold on to hardware for as long as possible
I fear that if I upgrade, I will end up spending hours on hold waiting to convince some dude in India that I'm not a pirate
I suspect this is primarily because people who think of buying a new PC go to the store and see Windows 8 and think 'WTF? Why do I want a tablet interface on my 24" monitor?'
In a vain attempt to gain a few percent market share on tablets, Microsoft are killing their PC cash cow.
The Mainframe isn't dead, however it isn't as widely used as it once was. They are still new Mainframes being made, and any true Computer Scientist would drool to get their hands on one.
But that being said, they are not selling as many as they use to, most companies are going to PC based servers, because they are cheaper, and more software flexibility, and you are not as stuck with one company for support, and a large group of developers who can handle the platform.
Now the PC, are tablets going replace them? No, but they will bring the PC down to a few manufacturers. I expect Lenovo, Dell, Apple to survive in the desktop area, as they (Apple to the lesser extent) have a good hold in the business markets. However PC's would probably be more like Workstations reserved for more computer intensive work such as Software Development, CAD, Finance... But for other people tablets, with say keyboards could replace the rest of the people.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Perpetual exponential growth? Good luck with that.
I would expect this to be obvious to the casual observer, but I guess not. So, let me enumerate:
Primary reasons for the decline:
1) The PC has been around now for over 20 years. It no longer possesses excitement and consumer appeal.
2) SMARTPhones and tablets are better meeting the needs and desires of the consumer; their increasing sales are supplanting PC sales.
3) The PC market is saturated, either due to consumer need or financial constraint. (Plenty of foreign markets have consumers but lack capital to meet the saturation levels of Western countries.)
4) Digital product producers, online retailers, and brick & mortar stores have all been significantly marketing tablet and SMARTPhone devices to consumers while ignoring their traditional PC products.
5) Tablets and SMARTPhones have much shorter average lifespans than traditional PCs, creating more consistant and continual demand for their replacement.
Ergo, you have a very simple recipe for the decline of PC sales.
"PC sales have been hurt in recent years by the growing popularity of tablets."
That's BS, it's Windows 8's fault entirely. This study doesn't count used PC resale or a drop in computer (scrap) recycling levels. Tablets replace laptops, not PCs. There is no drop because of tablets. It is completely Windows 8's fault.
Part of the longer life cycle is the lack of anything new with widespread appeal. Since Windows XP, the new versions have been lackluster. Sure, they draw a lot of really colorful pictures on the desktop. But they don't do much that couldn't already be done.
The existing PCs are powerful enough for most users, and have been for years. Most users are running Word, EXCEL, or their open source equivalents. They've had enough speed and memory for years. New hardware buys them little more than a keyboard without fingerprints. New software actually slows the machine down due to all the glitz.
Sure, there are a few people like me who want more speed for video processing, or other computational tasks,, but we're the exception, not the rule.
Why are people satisfied with 1080p. My 17" Dell laptop is 1900x1200. I want to replace it but every new dell is just 1080p and that's the upgrade they come stock with x900. I know the margins make it cheaper because of margins with all the 1080P TVs in production but jesus is a 17" laptop with more than a vertical resolution of 1080p too much to ask for?
Love or hate Apple at least their laptops have resolution Their 13" laptops are 2560-by-1600 and The 15" laptops are 2880-by-1800. That's twice the number of pixels as a Dell 17". I really wish Apple made a 17" laptop with retina display because I would buy it in a second.
The era of the PC is over. I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised at this.
That's drawing a conclusion on shaky evidence.
Drops in PC sales does't indicate that PC usage has dropped.
The real issue is two things:
- There's little in the way of new markets for generic computing devices. After 30 years, most of the population likely to ever have one have been served effectively by the companies selling them
- In existing, saturated markets, there's declining reason to replace existing systems. The sweet spot of memory, storage, and CPU power has been met for the majority of the uses that people have them for. Gaming is really the only area pushing a need for new computers, and even that is arguable in most cases. (Peripheral sales like new video cards is doing just fine, as an example). Even things like editing HD video of the kids is done more than effectively with five year old hardware.
That is the real problem. There's no need to upgrade a 3-4 year old system, short of hardware failures. The fact that even a small part of the market (and is IS very small) can do everything they need on a tablet, without a primary computer is more evidence that there's just no "new" uses that drive a need for new hardware, and a smaller "ultrabook" form factor isn't a compelling enough reason to get people to cough up $1k.
Fact is, other then web surfing, most of the things people have always used PCs for they still need to use PCs for. You can't store a terabyte of family video and photos on a tablet. If you have a Windows tablet, I suppose you could use an external drive. Wireless NAS is just too slow. You're not, generally, going to tap your way through your taxes on a little tablet.
PC era isn't over, but the era of 18-24 month lifespan for PCs is. If that doubles, then sales have to drop in half.
The PC is here to stay. What we are seeing is a longer life cycle. There is no need to update the hardware these days,
Hold on there why does anyone say this....I want more powerful hardware and can use it. Where is my 4X 1080P 24" touchscreen monitor, with keyboard with LED keys with these futuristic storage sizes with android compatibility...at a price I can afford.
Those are new monitors, not new PCs. You proved the GP's point. You talk about more powerful hardware, and listed nothing that actually involves replacing the PC. You just need to replace the peripherals.
Have you ever actually laid eyes on a mainframe? You seem to be confusing them with low-budget HPC clusters. IBM is the largest mainframe vendor and I can assure you that they are not "a bunch of PC servers with Infiniband."
They use processors unique to mainframes; they don't even use IBM's POWER CPUs. They certainly don't use "PC" processors.
The internal I/O architecture is also unique to the box. (This is why they were, for many, many, years, the king of transaction processing; they had some unique advantages over the PC/UNIX way of doing I/O.)
Externally, they can talk several different protocols; communication to the "outside world" is mostly TCP/IP, and communication to peripherals is done via FICON (mainframe I/O over Fibre Channel), although Linux partitions can use FCP. (SCSI over Fibre Channel.)
I don't think the boxes can talk infiniband at all. Why would they? That's mainly an HPC protocol, and you'd be a complete blithering idiot to be running HPC applications on a really-expensive business-oriented transaction-processing monster.
Who would buy a PC you can't use?
Many people are finding that they didn't need a PC in the first place when all they do is light web browsing and posting on Facebook. Previous to the smartphone/tablet, they needed a PC to do that. I think we'll see more special-purpose devices taking over functions that were previously relegated to the general-purpose PC.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
I have what I need and it is quite old. I wouldn't mind an upgrade but I don't have to get one. Plus if I do want an upgrade I will buy a used machine where someone put the best of everything into it 3 years ago.
./'rs can remove that crap in a second but for most users they are stuck with the stuff and the various ads annoy and scare them.
Most desktops can be repaired for around $70 so they can last until they are so old it becomes silly. Laptops are way less repairable and more breakable so they vanish from the pool of used machines faster.
But one factor keeping laptops running is that when the batteries die people just turn them into desktops and are happy with the mobility of their phones and tablets.
The biggest factor keeping people away from new machines is the relentless bloatware infesting most new machines. We
I didn't know Android and iOS ran Blender or Photoshop. Plus, if you're buying an expensive large tablet with a mouse, speakers, keyboard, probably a USB hub so you can plug more than one peripheral, you might as well buy a computer with a touch screen, it's going to be less cumbersome...
This is probably the most fitting, in my perspective, folks think their PCs are "fast enough" and "capable enough" that when they are tight on money will put off purchasing a new one.
Windows 8 certainly isn't a reason people are scrambling to upgrade, not only do you get something different (change==bad to most non techies), you loose compatibility with some of the hardware and more importantly the older software you already have. This includes DVD playback.
You want sales you have to offer carrots, give the consumers more capability, less restrictions, bundle in Office... something that the consumer would think, wow, "I gotta get me one of those!"
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The PC is not dead. For Windows, it was nearly perfected with Windows 7. Intel's Core i5 and i7 plus NVIDIA or AMD GPUs + 16GB RAM + SSD deliver the computing power of supercomputers from just a few years ago, and complete everyday tasks almost instantly. Why do people need to buy a PC that is only marginally faster, only to downgrade to Windows 8.n which is user-hostile on the desktop?
Tablets are new and rapidly advancing and people are buying them to do many things (snapshots, social networking, light web browsing) on the go, on their sofa, etc. but not to actually replace their PCs. Nearly any PC made in the last five years is "good enough" so why replace it before it fails?
The PC isn't dead; the market is simply saturated with computers that are finally "good enough" and a new computer is a downgrade thanks to Microsoft forcing the tablet UI upon everyone. I've had to install Classic Shell for Windows 8 users who are novices and complained the OS is unusable, so you can't convince me at all that Windows 8 is good for newbies.
Then for business, the Metro^H^H^H^H^HModern interface breaks usability and productivity; Windows 2.0's "innovative" overlapping windows (not so innovative actually - it was copied from Amiga) is removed. I don't know about you but when I am doing any kind of sysadmin or development work, I often have five to seven applications open, often overlapped so I can read documenation as I write scripts and code, or even work on spreadsheets.
I'd like Windows 8 if it came with the Aero interface and still supported glass, and the touch UI could be enabled as a choice - or even if it were the default and could be turned off, and if Metro apps could be moved around freely rather than be confined to full screen or tiled. I don't know about you, but even if I cared about touch screens on desktops and laptops, it would be a very secondary UI for me, because I want to keep my hands on the keyboard and mouse. I'm not new to touch screens either - I've been a PDA/tablet fan since WinCE. I own PocketPC (which I still use on occasion), iOS, and Android PDAs and tablets, and have used Windows XP tablets and each is great for its purpose, but when I did use the XP tablet as a desktop, I docked it and used only the keyboard and mouse. I never once used the touch screen while it was docked, nor would I bother with Win8's touch screen on a desktop or laptop.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Kids can most certainly appreciate a powerful machine if you bother to give one to them. They will happily lug it around too.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Are you insane? A 4 and 6 year old is not lugging around my 30 lb desktop and 4 monitors. If we are talking about laptops, I'm certainly not letting them handle my laptop either. As for power, what they hell do they need a quad-core i5 that they can't do with an ARM processor? Do they math and spelling games work suddenly better? Now if they need to do a research report in a few years, they can use the desktop but by then who knows what they will use then.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I think Microsoft has a tablet product that does run those programs. No one really uses it though.
The point I was trying to make that you keep avoiding is that there is no line between tablet and computer. A tablet is a kind of computer and a normal PC can be used basically the same way as a tablet. For me the best part of that form factor is taking one machine everywhere. Ideally my smartphone would dock and be able to use my normal set of peripherals, then when I go to a meeting become a laptop by docking, and then when I go out to dinner and need driving directions I can just use it as it.
Performance isn't as much of a factor any more - a 7 year old PC will browse the web and get your e-mail just as well as a brand new one. Monitor resolutions are stagnating at 1080p... video cards that are 3 generations old still play games great on single 1080p monitors.
In short, for most people (gaming enthusiasts and developers excluded), older PCs still work fine, so WHY UPGRADE?
Yeah, maybe a new PC will boot in 10 seconds, or that office app will launch in 50% of the time as the old one, but when that 50% is only another 2 seconds, who cares?
There was a time when improvements in PCs were more dramatic - you could FEEL the change performance between one PC and the next, but we've entered an era of diminishing returns with those performance improvements. Sure, we will see good improvements in media encoding time, or see lag on a game that is run on 3 monitors, but most people don't do these things all the time, or even some of the time.
This is why PC sales have dropped. Everybody who needs a computer has them, and most people are ok with the computer they have, until it breaks down. This obviously will slow down sales.
Not niche, it is becoming an appliance. Everybody already have one. The exponential growth and amazement period has passed. So you keep what you have until it breaks. There is no (big) money to make on this kind of market anymore. It is just another mature market, like dishwashers. We are seeing the transition from boom market to appliance market.
You don't have that for the same reason screens have settled on 720p and 1080p, the masses frankly see no need in going any higher and aren't gonna pay the early adopter penalty to get the economies of scale to get bigger and badder as the new standard. Hell my netbook is 1366x768 and I can see why, when I'm mobile its just fine,I'm not gonna go spend crazy money just to get a higher rez when all i want is to do the service call and go back to the shop.
But one correction, MSFT didn't "turn" the PC into anything, despite MSFT trying to shove their shit in our face like the "Deep Wang" bit in Transformers 3 Windows 8 is doing worse than Vista did and Win 8.1 looks to be the first double flop in history. Oh they WISH they had done that, so they could jack prices to Apple levels, but in reality every retailer and e-Tailer is saying "We have Win 7 here!" so all MSFT has done is killed a LOT of sales and honestly gave the pirates a hell of a boost, pirate win 7 slapped on win 8 systems is starting to become the norm, at least in my area.
And I don't see anybody "running to Android", what I see is people refusing to pay MSFT for an ad-laden cellphone OS so they are just sticking with what they have. Most every person i have met doesn't "like" their Android or iToy, they tolerate it. This is why plenty of laptops still selling, anything more than a quick Google on those phones and it quickly gets irritating for most folks but with even the low end laptops have dual cores there just isn't a reason to upgrade as often.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Buy more RAM dude! Seriously you should buy more while the prices are cheap, because there is NEVER such a thing as "too much RAM". I don't how Linux handles large RAM but in Win 7 the 8GB in my desktop is frequently filled with cache so everything loads quicker, and on my netbook that 8GB means that once the desktop is loaded its ALL running in RAM so the drive stays parked giving me better battery life. Sadly I had a sick family member when DDR 2 was cheap so now it'd cost out the Ying Yang to fill my desktop with the 4GB modules its capable of running, it'd be cheaper to replace the board and switch to DDR 3 than to just get more RAM with the price of 4GB DDR-2 modules.
As far as GPUs? Look at the HD7750 and HD7770, they score close to the HD6850 in benches while using less than half the power and heat, the HD7750 will even run without needing external power. But even with new consoles thanks to MSFT and Sony choosing a netbook chip (The Jaguar is based on Bobcat, an ULV netbook APU) I have a feeling anybody with a quad or better,like me with my hexa, is only gonna need a GPU upgrade and NOT toss the whole system like last time. Personally that is fine with me, I figure the HD7770s will hit the $70-$80 price point this fall so I'll just toss the HD4850 in the parts bin and keep on truckin'.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Now, this signals that PCs have been universally adopted. Now that everybody has one, the sales will obviously decline. But this only means that the growth period of PCs is over, and that personal computing has reached maturity.
Redundant internal engineering and resulting high reliability and security
Extensive input-output facilities
Strict backward compatibility with older software
High hardware and computational utilization rates to support massive throughput
There's no drive to design machines this way anymore? Somebody better tell IBM, as they haven't gotten the memo. They keep rolling out new models and customers keep buying them. (I think the latest estimates are that they are, after all these years, still responsible for about 40% of IBM's net profit.)
While they get little respect, IBM mainframes still meet all of those requirements (and no other significant architectures do.) The toughest is the backwards compatibility. You can, with a daisy-chain of dusty interface adapters, load any punch-card-based program (or a reel of tape), and run them just as if you would on a S/360 from the 1960's without changing a single line of code. And you can do this with a box just rolling off the line in Poughkeepsie today. It doesn't even involve a troublesome and bug-prone software emulator; every instruction supported on an S/360 is supported with current processors natively.
The I/O capabilities are still massive, and it's quite common for a mainframe to have more space dedicated to I/O adapters than CPU modules. (It's only in the last couple of years that the I/O offload capabilities on PC/UNIX boxes have come anywhere near to what mainframes have been doing since the 70's.)
And due to their cost and licensing structure, most of them do indeed run flat-out as much as possible.