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IDC: PC Shipments Decline Worse Than Forecasted, No Recovery Expected
symbolset writes "Zach Whittaker over at ZDNet covers an IDC report. In it the 2013 9.7% forecast decline in PC shipments is advanced to 10.1%. Further, IDC's longer-term forecast turns quite grim: contracting 23% from 2012 levels by 2017. There is also a projection of future Windows tablet sales, and a statement that total Windows tablet sales for 2013 are expected to be 'less than 7.5 million units.'"
“How did you go bankrupt?"
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
-- Ernest Hemingway
That's what you get when you plan for planned obsolescence and then can't actually make the machines obsolete. What's "grim" about it?
Ezekiel 23:20
They didn't say that there's a drop in overall computing devices sales, only in PC sales. They actually say that tablet sales are up... If anything, this suggests *more* in landfills, because a number of PC's that would otherwise be donated to a charity like Computers for Schools are no longer happening, meanwhile tablets that can't be upgraded/repurposed are being tossed.
Case in point, I've owned two tablets in the last 18 months. The first one turned out to be a piece of junk, and I gave it to a friend who was looking for something for the kids. There are people who would, in the same situation, simply toss it.
It used to be that a house with multiple PCs wasn't that uncommon. With phones & tablets there are now many households that can get by with zero PCs, and many more that can do everything they need with just one.
Real world user performance has stagnated, with hardware gains not translating into doing a given task faster anymore. A PC from three years ago isn't that much slower at what most users are doing than a brand new one, so there's no particular need to upgrade.
This is what a mature market looks like. The product is going to continue to sell for a long time, but it's not the hot item it used to be.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
We're past the time when computers are already obsolete by the time you're walking out of the store with them. I don't have a problem with that.
Not being a heavy gamer, I've had the same core PC (updated disk and graphics is all) for now 10 years. I have bought newer ones for the family, but even the worst new computer is better than the one I still use, and that one is still quite good.
Unless you're a hard-core gamer, computers should last LONG time for your average user.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
PC horsepower exceeded the needs of the average non-professional user a long time ago. I'm sitting in front of a $400 laptop from a couple of years ago that I can use for Adobe Premiere workflow! The market is flooded with computers that do everything a person needs, so why would you expect sales to continue increasing? People who barely use computers are moving to tablets, but tablets aren't what is trashing PC sales. People just don't need new ones, and good for them for milking that hardware until it blows up.
What makes you think that the kind of people who would toss a perfectly good tablet wouldn't also toss a perfectly good computer? At least a tablet's small, and correspondingly is a smaller item of waste.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
If you have to bypass UEFI just to have a working computer you might as well buy some other restricted device. Talk about killing the goose...
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Or phones and tablets with Android.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Every friend I know who games has built their own computer in the last couple years. If anything I've seen this trend increase rather than decrease. As a whole, less people are buying desktops but gamers are sticking with it.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Macs are actually doing as badly as anyone else. The only real difference is that Apple's successful in mobile phones and tablets whereas Dell, Lenovo etc. aren't.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Microsoft helped the NSA bypass their crypto. They were the first to join PRISM.
Do you actually have any evidence for this? Seriously, there are huge amounts of accusations flying around, but no real evidence. And what are the alternatives? Walled garden, becoming property of the advertisers, or a UI that only Stallman could love.
I was sceptical, but I looked at the numbers and you might be right. AMD and nVidia GPU card shipments continue to be good, which suggests the gaming PC market is healthy. Although direct-to-consumer motherboard shipments have declined quite a bit in the past few years, that's probably more to do with games tending to be GPU bound and there being correspondingly less need for CPU upgrades. Looks like it's just the general-purpose PC market that's fading out, which is what you'd expect now that "good-enough" tablets have hit the £200 bracket. (I'm looking at the Hudl and Nexus in particular.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"Even so, these Windows devices are projected to account for 10% of a combined PC & Windows Tablet market by 2016 – making them an important growth segment for the PC ecosystem."
Really makes Mr. Loverde sound like he's being paid to say good things about Windows. Who in their right mind could possibly believe that Microsoft's failure of a project is going to end up accounting for 10% of the market? It's a failure amongst tablets alone. I don't even know if there would be any benefit from him saying this, it just sounds crazy.
On a related note, I currently play Battlefield 4 on a computer I put together for around $400 a year ago, so I can definitely see why the PC market is struggling. But it will never disappear, which is enough for me.
In my experience, the larger something is the more value people associate with it. I've known dozens of people who buy $20 dust covers to protect their $5 desktop keyboard, but have lost (usually multiple) $300+ phones due to stupidity... err.. negligence (washing machines, sitting on them, etc). They'll also spend hours trying to clean out a keyboard they spilled beer on, but half the time won't even try waiting for their phone to dry out before getting a replacement.
And hardware sales are down. Sounds like what everyone else is saying, that current hardware is good enough and they have no reason to update.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
High-end PCs are still worth building IMO because you're trying to squeeze as much performance as possible out of it and it's easier to upgrade a year or two down the line. It's similar to how high-end cars usually have a lot of custom work put into them. However, for the bulk of PCs it's cheaper, easier, and causes fewer warranty headaches to buy from Dell or HP, and the PCs will likely not see so much as a RAM upgrade before being replaced in 3 to 6 years.
I built my last PC but I'm seriously considering just buying my next one because my only "special" requirement is that I need it to run at least 4 monitors, and that's easy enough to do with any two video cards (or even one card plus integrated graphics these days).
Don't take this the wrong way but I suspect it might be the people you know, and not a general trend. I see - and know - plenty of people using phones with completely shattered screens covered up with a cheap screen protector because they don't want to buy a new one.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
And the PC games that do catch on are lasting a lot longer, which means fewer PC upgrades. Look at WoW - it's in decline, but it's still pretty popular in spite of being 9 years old. There's plenty of other older games that still enjoy large followings. Then some newer games don't require much at all. I ran Diablo III off integrated graphics when it first came out, Minecraft runs fine on my 7 year old laptop, etc. Games don't drive hardware nearly as much as they did 5 or 10 years ago.
Lenovo have seen increasing PC sales (against the general market) and they move plenty of phones and tabs, especially on their home turf. For new off-the-shelf PCs I don't see anyone making stuff as interesting as Lenovo.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
For a phone that represents 50% market share iPhone users seem to have broken screens far more commonly than the users of any other phone manufacturer.
Then the split happened. Finally people realized, the market demanded and the free market delivered a computer purely optimized for content consumers. They have deserted and are deserting the all purpose computer in droves. At the end of the day, we code warriors would be forced to pay more for our computers. Still the commodity common components like memory and peripherals would be amortized over a larger set of computer users. The desktop pc might not get to be as expensive is IBM 3090. But the days where you can run Fluent solver to simulate fluid flow on a "home" PC are gone.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'd have to argue that PCs last longer. I've never replaced a desktop or laptop more than once every four years. Using my family, which I understand is a very small non-representative sample.
I've had two laptops in the last 6 years, one is sitting in a closet being used as a media server for my house the other is my primary. I've never owned a tablet, but I'm thinking of getting one. I just don't know if I can justify it for the stuff I want to use it for (games and programming). It might be alright to take to the in-laws to read the morning news or surf the web rather than lugging my laptop back and forth. Or I could give one to my wife, since all she does is surf the web and play facebook games, and save some money on replacing her three year old over powered laptop, which I might turn into a Minecraft server.
I digress, In the last six years:
My brother has gone through three tablets and is looking at another one. iPad, playbook, iPad2, now looking at a Transformer. (3 tablets)
My younger sister took one of his old ones as her first tablet, but has since gone through two more and currently has an iPad2. iPad (hand-me-down lasted 3 months), iPad (dropped in pool), Kindle (not a hand-me-down), iPad2 (3 tablets, I didn't count the first iPad since it was a hand-me-down)
My Step-mother has had two tablets (one was a Kindle replaced by her kindle fire) (2 tables)
My mom, who lives in the states, has had more tablets than I care to mention, she comes to visit every year and for the last five years has a different model every time she's here. (5 tablets)
My Dad did get one, but he's barely touched it in three years. He's an old school developer and prefers something with a keyboard and mouse. iPad (1 tablet)
My older sister has had an iPad and a Kindle and currently has a surface RT. Her BF gave it to her two weeks ago and she hates it, too slow, too heavy, doesn't run the software she expected it to (because she thought she was getting a surface pro). Supposedly the BF is taking it back this week, but she wants another tablet to replace her original iPad, which runs like crap now. I recommended a Nexus if she didn't want iPad2 or iPad Air. I think she'll probably be going with the iPad Air since carrying weight matters to her as she travels a lot for her job. iPad, Kindle, Surface RT, TBA (3 tablets)
My Mother in-law is getting her first tablet for Christmas. ASUS Transformer Prime (1 tablet)
So of the people I know who have/use tablets that's about 2.5 tablets per person over the last six years. Where as between me an my wife three laptops over the last six years and the laptops get repurposed until the literally don't function anymore so they really last me between six to eight years. Tablets get handed down or tossed out because once they're not useful for everyday tasks anymore they sit around collecting dust.
That's just my take on it though.
It's often not a case of "won't buy an new one" but a case of "can't buy a new one".
Why would someone living on such slim margins buy a smartphone and its expensive data plan in the first place instead of buying a dumbphone? A lot of smartphone customers are paying $80 per month; I pay that much per year for my dumbphone.
It's often not a case of "won't buy an new one" but a case of "can't buy a new one". smartphones are expensive gadgets, and for a lot of people, $400+ is a lot of money and something people can't afford to spend every 6 months.
So don't buy a $400 phone.
Added bonus, I don't think I've ever broken the screen on multiple phones in the $150-300 range, and some of those phones have suffered some serious abuse. One of them was dropped from a 3rd floor balcony, winged off the edge of a swimming pool, and into the drink. I had to change into my swim suit, and go down the stairs to fish it out... it *still* works... my dad's using it now. The only scar it has from its ordeal was that I needed to buy a new battery, and there's a small divot on one of the edge bezels. (That was an LG Shine Plus).
I would like to see the iPhone that could survive a drop like that....
Sounds like what everyone else is saying, that current hardware is good enough and they have no reason to update.
That was true in the seventh generation when PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were stuck on tech that was high-end in 2005. But now, the latest consoles are up to 2013 tech (AMD Jaguar, do the math), and PC games' system requirements are likely to rise to meet PlayStation 4 and Xbox One specs.
I've been using Linux since 1995. Linux has been falling behind not gaining. I can't find any Linux distributions that boot on my MacRetina, a hugely selling laptop that's been out 16 months.
Want a bigger disk? Buy a bigger disk and put it in your PC!
Want more memory? Buy more memory and put it in your PC!
Want a faster CPU? Buy a faster CPU and put it in your PC!
Want a faster GPU to play games? Buy a faster graphics card and put it in your PC!
The rest of the market, phones, tablets and consoles is all "consumer packaged components" which are not replaceable or upgradeable.
The whole AMD/Intel war would not have happenbed without the PC.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
PC hardware is "good enough" where games tend to not be pushing the envelope on graphics anymore.
Take Everquest: Next for example. Instead of continuing with detailed textures, they have decided to follow Blizzard's lead and go for the low-res, "cartoony" type of world. Part of this is due to their voxel technology, but part of it is so their game can run on almost anything.
PC games are not really declining either. GOG seems to be doing a good business, Steam is doing well, and even MS's store is hanging in there. If PC gaming really was dropping off, the game makers would have already left the platform in droves to focus on consoles only.
Agreed. Bought 3 Lenovo laptops, for home use, in the past 18 months. Versus 1 new desktop (and several used ones from the local recycler). Anecdotal, but mirrors the big picture.
Another factor in favor of laptops these days -- dirt cheap. Well under $300 now, whereas middling desktops at Costco are at least $500 to $600 AND you then need a monitor (that can go from $100 to $1000 depending on your hunger for pixels).
I come here for the love
People try to push tablets into this "consumption only" role as if it were the only thing they were capable of.
Good luck being able to develop apps for a tablet on a tablet, or even just install a community-created mod for a tablet game, unless the tablet is a Surface Pro or something else built on the Lenovo-compatible x86 PC architecture.