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We'll Be the Last PC Company Standing, Acer CEO Says
Velcroman1 writes: At a sky-high press conference atop the new World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, Acer unveiled a sky-high lineup of goods – and placed a flag in the sand for the sagging PC industry. "There are only four or five players in the PC industry, and all of us are survivors," Jason Chen, CEO of Acer Corp, told an international group of reporters. "We will be the last man standing for the PC industry." To that end, the company showed off a slew of new laptops and 2-in-1s, the new Liquid X2 smartphone, and introduces a new line of gaming PCs, called Predator. I suspect Apple will outlive Acer; who do you think will fall next (or rise next)?
Dell and HP have enterprise staying power, Panasonic Toughbooks are basically an industry standard.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It taught me to never go cheap again.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
They are PCs. Uses just have to throw away the BSD that came with them and upgrade to Windows.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I could easily see Apple abandoning the PC market. As a business they make most of the money on mobile devices & iStore. They continue to make good hardware in their laptops but it would be easy to see them decide it wasn't worth it if the pc market deteriorated further in the future.
PCs are going from commoditized to some sort of ultra-commoditized place not even yet seen in the PC market.
Intel's new SoC's reduce what you need for a basic end-user computer to a motherboard the size of a stick of gum. And that's not an exaggeration.
SoC+memory module+32 gigs EMMC+wifi chip and you're done.
Microsoft has even started seeing the light, and is pricing consumer windows down in the givaway range, because they know their old 199-for-base-99-for-upgrade model does not stand up when the hardware costs half that. Microsoft knows that they've got to give away windows and make it up on services, otherwise ChromeOS devices will eat them alive in the consumer space.
The premium PC market will remain. There are gamers. There are people that need to work.. But high-end consumer is already owned by apple. They enjoy -margins- with macbooks 1000% better than their nearest competitor. It not matters 2 shits what anyone puts out. Apple will be the only survivor because they're the only ones making money.
This had better end in a Steel Cage match.
PC Survivor Series. Make it happen.
PC industry has "4 or 5 players"? Really?
Apple
Asus
Acer
Dell
HP
Lenovo
Toshiba
Not to mention the plethora of hardware component manufacturers which are dozens.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Margins are thin
Not for the Mac, they're not. Apple's the only PC maker who doesn't have to operate on razor-thin margins.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That would make perfect sense to me. They don't care about the Mac, and haven't since the iPhone. Originally, products like the iPod were designed to sell more Macs -- but with the decoupling of iTunes from their "operating system" and the insane pace of iPhone sales, they realized that the real money wasn't in Macs. It never was, but it took them a long time to realize it.
I think the signs are already there. They get rid of Aperture thus shunning the "I got a DSLR a year ago, now I'm a photographer" crowd, and not long ago, the whole FCPX debacle showed the video editing world how much Apple gave a crap about them and their industry. Recently, DJs were taken aback by the lack of ports on the new MB -- because they knew that those stupid dongles would break very quickly and need to be replaced constantly as all Apple cables must be.
Nope, Apple would rather continue selling to mass market nubs who won't complain about features on their iPhone. Corporates are too much work, they have requirements and those requirements can't be dictated to them by some egotistic nutjob working at an art gallery that thinks it's a computer company.
Some of use still play games. You can say bye to all the low spec crap you like, but some of us like performance, and you don't get that from laptops or SBC. Not everyone wants to play flappy-birds. Some of us want to push Rome to the limits.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Right. The desktop will die, probably in the year of the Linux Desktop. I've been hearing this for 10 years or more. Desktops aren't going anywhere soon. The market will evolve, but it isn't going to die.
Actually, a few years ago at WWDC, the whole "Apple isn't making personal computers anymore" came up in one of the labs. And the comment from one of the Apple guys was, "Do we really want iOS development to be dependent on Windows?"
One of my favorite "features" of some of the old Packard Bell models was the power switch configuration. The true power switch was actually a tiny little button that was soldered directly onto the motherboard. That is, they didn't have the two-pin power-on mechanism that has become common on most consumer motherboards, so there was no way to wire a switch on the case to start the computer. Packard Bell solved this problem by engineering a fairly complicated push rod system that mechanically linked the switch on the front of the case to the little button on the motherboard. As I remember it, the push rod mechanism extended for most of the length of the horizontal desktop case, too. It was really something to behold -- I wish I had taken a picture of it.
What Apple learned from the PC manufacturers, is to not depend on anyone. They are one of the few companies who keep all design and technology in-house.
It's key to how Apple operates that they can and do switch suppliers and manufacturing locations.
The whole PC-clone industry became possible because IBM and others didn't own the designs or the technology. It is why companies like ASUS, MSI, AMD and many others exist in the PC industry, but there are no equivalents in Apple land.
It is the key difference between the PC and Apple industry. It is also the reason why I think Apple will be making machines for OSX for a long time, at least as long as those are needed to develop software for Apple (iOS or whatever). Apple doesn't want to depend on any one and doesn't want anyone to be easily able to copy them. It is at the core of their business model.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Makes you wonder what type of constraints they were working under to come up with a solutions like [the power switch rod]...
If memory serves, this was to meet UL certification rules. For some reason, line voltage was not allowed to cross the case to the switch. That said, my first PC was a whitebox clone that completely violated these rules, so don't be surprised if your no-name PC from that era also lacked the Rube Goldberg rod linkage.
The ATX form factor solved this by using a low voltage signal to control the power supply -- the wires crisscrossing the case for this carry no more than 5V (with a large series resistance). Shorting that to ground turns the power supply on; this (plus a 5V standby signal powering a small supervisor microcontroller) is how your motherboard can control the power to the system.