PC Shipments Are Slowly Recovering

mrspoonsi sends this news from TechCrunch: Over the past two years, the growing popularity of mobile devices has eaten into PC sales. A new report by Gartner, however, shows that shipments may continue to enjoy a very slow but steady uptick this year as tablet sales hit a peak. The research firm found that worldwide PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2014 grew one percent year-over-year, the first increase since 2012. In the U.S., PC shipments increased 13.1 percent year-over-year, the fastest increase in four years, thanks to holiday purchases. Inexpensive laptops (about $200 to $300), thin and light notebooks, and laptops with a detachable screen helped drive growth. Lenovo continued to be the number one PC maker in terms of shipment volume, with a 19.4 percent marketshare.

Comments

My guess

[Firethorn]

My estimate on the reasons:
1. People have limited amounts of money for computer gadgets. IE tablet OR new laptop/PC
2. Tablets were the 'new thing', but people who would buy them now already have one(lowering sales of them) and/or have gotten over the 'shiny' and are perhaps now looking for more functionality again. I know I hate typing on mine. What's one of the hotter accessories? Bluetooth keyboard, often built into the case itself.

So people put off buying a new laptop and such in favor of the tablet. Especially with the fun of Windows 8. Now that tablet purchasing is more or less down to routine replacement, people are picking up PCs again.

Re:My guess

[nine-times]

I would guess that's a component, but I suspect some of it was also just an issue of timing.

I work in IT servicing a lot of small businesses, and from what I've seen over the years, it seems like most businesses had gotten into the habit of buying new computers every few years. Both the hardware and software were improving quickly and drastically, and it made sense to buy a new computer every 3 years or so.

And then around... I don't know, 2006, when it came time for the 3 year upgrade cycle, a lot of businesses looked at the computer they already had and said, "Meh... this is still doing what I need it to do. I don't see there being much value in spending another $1,500 for a new computer."

And that continued, one year after the other. In 2010, they were still looking at some of their computers from 2005 and saying, "I know it's an old computer, but it still does everything we need it to do. I'm not going to spend money I don't need to."

But then in the last couple years, we hit a couple of milestones. First, a lot of those computers are now getting to be around 10 years old. In computer terms, "7 years old" sounds bad, but it sounds to the decision-makers like something they can live with, whereas "10 years old" apparently sounds like it ought to be replaced.

The other big milestone was that Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP, which means all of the old Windows XP machines either need to be replaced or updated to Windows 7 or Windows 8. Upgrading an old, outdated machine with no warranty is often not really worth the trouble, and so the need to move to a new version of Windows was the last straw for all those old machines that should have been replaced a few years ago.

So honestly, if I had to guess, I'd guess that you're going to see an uptick in laptop/desktop PC purchases over 2014-2015, and then you're going to see it drop off again. Once most of those old 10-year-old Windows XP machines are replaced, sales will go back down. But I also don't see them stopping anytime soon. Tablets are not going to be a real replacement for business use-- unless you're talking about something like the Microsoft Surface, where it's really just a laptop without a keyboard.

Re:My guess

[scottbomb]

Wow, your people must really abuse their machines. My Lenovo laptop is 5 years old and in perfect condition. Yeah, the original battery is gone but replacements are a-plenty.

Re:My guess

[pete6677]

I wonder how many people who initially bought into the tablet hype realized it really sucks to type a paper on an iPad and switched back to a PC?

Re:My guess

[rioki]

You know, many engineers actually use the computing power given to them. Granted not all the time, but if a project compiles in five min instead of one hour, that actually means something. The complaining normally starts, because they know that with a better system they would not wait that long. On the other hand MANY other office computer users topped their "maxing out" the machine at around 2005.

Re:My guess

[david_thornley]

And how many who decided that typing a lot on an iPad sucked and got a bluetooth keyboard?

Really, there's a lot of people who don't need more than an iPad with keyboard, and I'd far rather support my in-laws with iPads than real computers.

Not like IDC numbers?

[Anonymous Coward]

IDC saw the worldwide PC market down 2.4 percent.

Which is it Sunshine?

Saturation

[Livius]

Very few people have any need to upgrade.

Some do, of course, and sooner or later there will be new breakthrough that will justify upgrades for most people, but a large number of people have all the computer power they need until something actually fails.

This is why software providers are trying to force upgrades for marginally better if not actually inferior versions.

Re:Saturation

[Anonymous Coward]

Very few people have any need to upgrade.

This.

The only really interesting thing to happen over the past five years or so is SSDs. And they're a drop-in, not a 'buy/build a new PC!'

I say this as someone who primarily uses my PC for gaming, and who just blew around $1k. Bought the entry hardcore-level video card du jour for $350. i7-4790K and new motherboard. New SSD and bulk drive, because my old drive was dying. It's cool and all, but worth it only because I'm living the life of an IT worker and making more money than I can spend. It isn't worth it because $1k has gained me very little performance over my previous three year old system. Certainly not the sort of performance boost that $1k (or even $500) would have bought you back in the old days.

PC tech is stagnating. It's been years, and Intel's processors have devolved into incremental upgrades rather than astonishing leaps and bounds of performance glory. AMD isn't innovating shit. DDR4 has been around forever, tech-wise at least - and nobody but the truly hardcore have been using it. Nor will they for another year or two. Video cards? Video cards are being pushed solely by crazy loons buying and overclocking panels from Korea. If you, like 99.9% of people, don't do that, you have no real need to Crossfire or SLI up half a dozen cards.

Now imagine instead of chasing frames at 2560x1600, we're talking about the average user on a - let's be generous and say 24" monitor at 1080p. They're Facebooking, Doing some word processing. Running shitty javascript in their browsers. Okay, that last one might be a reason to upgrade - but not really.

Not if you purchased a decent PC anywhere within the last five years.

As for mobile, it's a red herring. Laptops didn't kill the PC, and neither will mobile. Mobile compliments the PC. If anything, mobile is doing damage to laptops. And I know - technically, laptops are PCs - but nobody in the real world is talking about laptops when they say "PC".

Re:Saturation

[Lumpy]

Dropped an SSD in my 2011 quad i7 2.8ghz Macbook Pro, It is now as fast as the top of the line macbook pro you can buy right now. so I'll be not buying a new laptop for another 2-3 years.

Even with heavy programming, 3d rendering, and video editing, I don't saturate 4 i7 cores, the bottleneck was the hard drive and now it 's not.

Intel has not released ANYTHING that is worth upgrading to. I'm waiting for 8 core i7 processor with at least a 4ghz clock speed, bot nothing exists that is anything but a tiny fractional increase than the old one I'm running now.

Re:Windows XP?

[AuMatar]

People don't care about support. Big business might, but small business and individuals only care about if the computer runs and runs fast enough to not be annoying.

PCs are still awesome imo

[Morpeth]

1) Gods help me if have to type anything of substance on a phone or tablet (without a full keyboard)
2) I'm a gamer, enough said,
3) I like a nice big clear monitor to work on, no tablet comes close
4) Though it doesn't apply to people outside of the /. crowd so much, I love building/upgrading my own systems, it's fun and cheap.
5) Processing/GPU power and cost. If you're not worried about physical contraints, as is the case with PCs vs. phones/tablets, you can get SO much more power for less money. Yeah my desktop case is big, but you simply can't get the kind of graphics power I want for gaming in anything else.

I think people are starting to realize the PC is still very, very useful.

Is there a new game coming out?

[Maltheus]

I think PC gaming went first. So many of the genres I used to play disappeared or got dumbed down. And it was always the latest games that drove my upgrade cycle. Something simple like Minecraft doesn't require this.

If I were in the PC hardware biz, I'd look into owning a game company on the side that focuses on the most beautiful, resource intensive games I could muster.

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[jedidiah]

Windows 8.1 is a result of the backlash against Win8. Subject the average user to Win8 and they will still manifest the same "abject fear" they always had. Microsoft just backtracked a little.

Enough apparently to make Win 8.1 much less despised than it's predecessors.

It's almost like they rediscovered the idea that you shouldn't treat your customer like sh*t.

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[Luckyo]

Microsoft made 7 available again, reversing earlier decision not to sell it.

That was the result.

8 is still pretty much a consumer repellent.

Re:Windows 8.1: Not quite as shitty as believed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8.1 is a result of the backlash against Win8. Subject the average user to Win8 and they will still manifest the same "abject fear" they always had. Microsoft just backtracked a little.

Even if that's that case, that is a *good* thing! That means MS is actually listening when customers vote with their wallets!

It's almost like they rediscovered the idea that you shouldn't treat your customer like sh*t.

Good! Now if only the Linux distro development community could pull it's collective head out of its collective ass and do the same we wouldn't have to put up with the steaming pile of systemd!

Re:Shoddy journalism

[petermgreen]

Microsoft isn't sharing the pain because they didn't drop their per unit monpoly winnings... for now.

MS recently introduced something called "Windows 8.1 with Bing". Basically they are giving away windows free for low end laptops and tablets on the condition that the PC vendor doesn't change the default search engine.