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Sales Of PCs, Laptops, Tablets Continue to Fall, Hit Lowest Point Since 2011 (canalys.com)
According to the latest numbers provided by marketing research firm Canalys, the shipments of PC devices -- which includes desktops, notebooks, all-in-ones, two-in-ones, and tablets -- amounted to 101 million units in the first quarter of 2016. The number underscores a 13% decline from the same period a year ago, and it is also the lowest volume since the second quarter of 2011. Apple led the chart among PC OEMs, moving 14 million units (suffering 17% fall), followed by Chinese conglomerate Lenovo. HP assumed the third position, with Dell and Samsung closely following it. Tim Coulling, Canalys Senior Analyst said in a press statement: The global PC market had a bad start to 2016 and it is difficult to see any bright spots for vendors in the coming quarters. The tablet boom has faded in the distance and the market is fully mature. Global shipments declines are expected to continue unless vendors bring transformational innovation to the market. Apple and Microsoft are propping up shipments in established markets with their detachables, but price points make them less affordable in low-income countries. Although other vendors are coming to market with cheaper alternatives, they are unlikely to have a big impact on volumes in the short term. The number of people looking to buy their first PC is at an all-time low and 2016 is likely to bring yet more turmoil to global PC vendors.
Why buy a PC when it is saddled with the data harvesting of Windows 10? I do not want Microsoft to be monitoring me and my family via Windows 10.
We really haven't had a lot of advancement in consumer PCs for consumers to get excited about. It was easy to get consumers to want to upgrade in years past but what do they need now? They have the monitor they want, they have enough storage, and their applications all run well. We were able to previously sell them on "new is better" but now the best we can do is sell them on "replace instead of repair". We used to be selling PCs to people who want to run the latest game or the newest office suite. Now most PC time is spent on facebook, which doesn't require much more than the fanciest version of solitaire.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I haven't upgraded in 5 years because for building the same price computer I can only get a CPU twice as fast and a graphics card 3 times as fast as 5 years ago. It is a far cry from doubling every single year. It just isn't worth it to upgrade quickly anymore.
...you are a hardcore gamer or a business needed lots of power, there is no real reason for regular or average computer users to upgrade constantly.
Windows is an awful mess and people are tired of the constant upgrades and changing featuresets/UIs. The computer you bought 3-5 years ago, barring mechanical failure still meets or exceeds your needs for the most part, so why waste the money?
Computers are too common, so the "WOW" factor that tells folks to buy a new one all the time just isn't there. Tablets/Smartphones are starting to hid the same skid.
It's simple... We've hit a performance plateau quite a while ago. Not sure when I bought my Dell XPS 15 L502x. Something like 2010 and it was on sale for 50% of the price. Anyway, that is a Core i7 2630QM (or 2635QM, I need to check) and it came with 4GB RAM (later upgraded to 16GB). There is simply nothing I can throw at it that it can't do with cycles spare.
Five year old machine: totally fine...
So, PC sales are dependent on replacement sales... as most people do not need more performance.
I'd wager to say that the late Core2Duos in the XP days, would be enough performance for most tasks, but I'm sure I'll get the 640kByte is enough quote attributed to Billy
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Can't afford PC, laptop, or tablet.
The industry just needs to get off its laurels and stop pushing cloud. Since everything is going web application, there is little reason to have a beefy desktop system. The software vendors are pushing leased software that's cloud based, meaning the money hardware vendors would have made is now being spent monthly/annually by the software/cloud vendors.
If the hardware industry decided to standardize and actually push a free OS like Linux and tout the advantages to owning your own data, they would be back in business. Its wishful thinking and the hardware industry as a whole has never been very good about acting in their own best interest, preferring to suck the dick of their sugar daddy Microsoft but we could hope.
Seriously, today's PCs are GROTESQUELY overpowered for anything but certain types of games.
I'm running a six year old hex-core CPU (i7 970) with a 2 year old video card (GTX 970) and an SSD boot disk.
I'm not doing 4K gaming. It's primarily a workstation (see WORK) and I do a bit of light gaming on the side.
There's literally no reason I couldn't go another 5 years on this machine.
I also have an older laptop (Thinkpad T61p). It's still fine for web browsing and light gaming as well. RAM is maxed out and it's running off an SSD boot disk too.
It does what I need it to, so I have zero reason to replace it.
Can anyone seriously fault me for not spending another couple grand to refresh these machines?
Honestly, the PC market was in the Moore's Law bubble so long, that it's LONG overdue for this sort of correction.
We'll probably see decreasing sales over the next 5-10 years as people are keeping their workhorse machines longer.
Current equipment will need the time to age out. And, once it does, we should see the sales cycles stepping up again, though never again to the levels they were.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!