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PC Shipments In 2013 See the Worst Yearly Decline In History

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-will-it-stabilize-at? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The PC market continues to be in free fall, having now seen its seventh consecutive quarter of declining worldwide shipments. Worldwide PC shipments dropped to 82.6 million units in the fourth quarter of 2013, according to Gartner, a 6.9 percent decrease from the same period last year. It's worth emphasizing that this past quarter resulted in a total of 315.9 million units shipped in 2013, a 10 percent decline from 2012, and the worst decline in PC market history. The overall shipment level was equal to the one in 2009."

17 of 564 comments (clear)

  1. Current PCs are good enough. by roc97007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Film at eleven.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also people are turning to tablets more often for casual computing rather than getting a 2nd or 3rd computer. And then some people just don't like Win 8.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    2. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by msobkow · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Old PCs are good enough. I'm still on a 3.8 GHz P4 single core running Debian, and it's fast enough for everything I do but running my pet project or doing video encoding, both of which I do on my Core i7 laptop.

      My folks recently had to replace their machine. It's a quad core unit that is such serious overkill for email and surfing it's not even funny. Unless it breaks down, I doubt they'll *ever* have to replace it.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    3. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Informative

      And then some people just don't like Win 8.

      You've actually met someone who does like Window 8?

      Everyone I know who's seen it takes one look, goes 'WTF?' and decides not to buy a new PC after all.

    4. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by hairyfish · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That, and that fact that Win8 is an unmitigated disaster. Had Win8 given us a Win7-type interface then I'm sure the slowing PC market wouldn't have slowed quite as quickly.

    5. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by roc97007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is that. It'd be difficult to quantify, but I suspect that there is a significant percentage of people who were going to get another PC, but decided to wait rather than struggle with Win8.

      But I think the overriding factor is that PCs made since, oh, 2007 are fast enough for any but the most demanding needs.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    6. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by roc97007 · · Score: 5, Funny

      > You've actually met someone who does like Window 8?

      I have. Well, wait, he says he does, but he works in Redmond (true story) so it may be a job requirement.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    7. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by Peristaltic · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's Microsoft's fault. They won't allow the makers to sell you a PC without a tablet OS.

      I'm sure that's a significant factor. I wonder how the makers feel about that.

      Look no further "Samsung is blaming Windows 8 for its poor performance in the PC market and the overall decline of the industry as a whole."

    8. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by scamper_22 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What is odd though is that this is not an enviable market to be in. People spend all kinds of money on things they don't need or replacing things that work perfectly well.

      Even with something as expensive as cars, many people just want a newer car for the simple reason that it is newer. Their old car works perfectly well. But hey,,, time to buy a new car.

      People spend so much money eating out or on coffee and snacks... yet think twice before spending $1.99 or some app.

      People replace clothes all the time just because they're bored of it.

      Apple has probably been the most visible in its ability to get people to think of the computing market like they do the rest of life.

      I often catch myself thinking about my purchases. I'll be cheap about my computer or worry about spending money on a game that takes so much skill to make (so many programmers, graphic artists, managers...). Then I'll go out and spend $50.00 at a restaurant or blow $50 on a pair of jeans that probably cost $5 to make and rest is all show.

      Current PCs are good enough, but it is sad how poorly we treat the field relative to the rest of life.

      yeah, a PC is just a tool... and that's the problem.
      A cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.
      A pair of jeans is just clothing.

      Somehow many other fields manage to make it more than that and that keeps the money going.

    9. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Funny

      I went on a trip to Africa a few years back and by shear chance ended up traveling with a Microsoft Salesman. God was that a fun trip... I generally like giving people shit but this was special... ...and when he pulled out his windows phone, and it wouldn't connect... then it crashed... He had to borrow my Android... I just stood there grinning ear to ear every time he had to call home.

    10. Re:Current PCs are good enough. by gweilo8888 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also, if kept reasonably clean, a Mac will last way longer than the typical OEM box/laptop.

      Is that from the ministry of made-up statistics? Because if so, I'd like to rebut with this, from the ministry of silly ministries -- I have multiple, perfectly-working Windows-based PC machines (both desktop and laptop) that are well over a decade old. In fact, the *only* component failures of any kind that I have had with my machines are hard disks, fans, and keyboards, all of which fail with identical frequency in Macs because they are the exact same components.

  2. Computers these days are more than adequate by Jimbookis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anything sold in the last 4-5 years with an i3/i5/i7 with over 2GB of RAM and Vista or Win7 is still more than enough for most businesses and individuals. There is no real incentive to replace the whole machine when there are cheap options to upgrade with a few more GB and an SSD to give it a new lease of life.

  3. Nice to See Macs are Up by glennrrr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apple's PC shipments are up 28% in the US. Good for them as a side business.

  4. Custom Builds by Koby77 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How many brand PC units were replaced by custom built PCs?

    1. Re:Custom Builds by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Informative

      Custom built PCs are a niche market. I highly doubt they would have anything near a 10% impact on the entire PC market.

      Not anymore. Asus mentioned they have sold millions of high end/gaming motherboards as gamers no longer buy Dells and replace the GPU like they did in the old days.

      You can thank crappy PSU's and proprietary tiny cases for this decline as gamers are the only ones who upgrade besides corporations and they only do so every 10 years now when MS decides it needs more money for another OS upgrade.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
  5. Window 8 by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wasn't Window 8 released about seven quarters ago?

  6. Have you seen the PCs they're selling these days? by nctritech · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Everyone will say "no sense replacing what works" and I agree. Let's look at what one would be able to buy now, though, and why people wouldn't buy it.

    On the low end of the price spectrum, you have Chromebooks (yuck, puke, no one sane buys these unless they put Linux on it instead), Celerons, and AMD E2 and A4 processors; none of those are even remotely fast. Moving up in price, you see a lot of AMD APUs and Intel Core i3-M systems. I've owned two fairly new laptops recently, one with an AMD A8-4500M ($400) and one with an Intel Core i7-2630QM ($830). The i7 was disappointing (it's a freaking i7, it should absolutely blaze) and only more so because for tasks that are not heavy in the data processing side of things (i.e. data/video compression, software compilation) the A8 seemed to move much faster than the i7 with identical Windows 7 images. Unfortunately, someone at AMD had the stupid idea of making the L1 instruction caches a pitiful 16KB in size and that makes data-heavy tasks run like dog poo.

    On the higher side of things, you find ridiculous and exotic offerings like the Yoga 2 Pro with a 13.3" LCD that has a 3200x1800 resolution (hint: you can't read anything at all unless you squint) and it comes with a low-performance ULV version of a mobile (read: already low-performance without being ULV) Core i5 and a nice low-performance Intel GPU, and all versions of this insane hardware combination are around the $1000 mark. I also firmly believe that while there is a market for "ultrabooks," the majority of people out there are wasting their money on "convertible laptops" and having touchscreens for Windows 8. It's a neat shiny new feature that ends up only being useful in niche situations and otherwise was no different than wrapping $400 up and chucking it in the rubbish bin.

    Why would anyone buy a new laptop when they are so ridiculous? If you're penny-pinching, you get a machine with tons of RAM, hard drive space, and maybe even USB 3.0, but the CPU is slow beyond belief and the whole system suffers. Dropping a few hundred more bucks might get you into i7 territory but even the i7 up to Sandy Bridge is, in my experience, not much better than equivalent higher-end chips in laptops made four years ago. Why blow $1000 on a really nice new laptop when they're either not much better than what you already own or they're an expensive high-resolution joke of a machine? No thanks; I'll wait until they sweeten the pot some more. (And until the convertibles fad goes to hell.)