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PC Shipments Return To Growth In the US (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the people-are-buying-PCs-again dept.

PC shipments are seeing a welcome growth in the United States. The industry, which has seen a continual decline in the sales in the past few consecutive quarters, is now seemingly gaining some momentum in the United States, according to independent findings by marketing research firms IDC and Gartner. According to IDC, the PC shipments have increased by 4.9%, whereas Gartner says it has observed a 1.4% growth. From a report on The Verge: The estimates differ because Gartner does not count Chromebooks as part of its figures, while IDC cites Google's laptops as a key reason for US growth. [...] Worldwide, PC shipments are still on a decline. Gartner estimates a 5.2 percent drop, and IDC calculates around a 4.5 percent decrease in shipments. Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade comes to an end on July 29th, and IDC believes it may prompt some PC users into buying new machines. Gartner also forecasts a Windows 10 hardware refresh for businesses, that it expects to see "more toward the end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017."

4 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Obviously by franzrogar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When people started to realize that mobiles, iCraps, Nezus 9, PDAs and other monstruosities ain't built for real work (but publicity and companies catalogs), real computers are being sold again.

  2. Chromebooks don't count? by zerofoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does Gartner only consider a computer running windows a PC?

    Our company is increasingly getting work done in the cloud. A web browser is all most of our employees really need. The nature of office work is changing - and is increasingly less-reliant on windows to get that work done.

  3. Smaller market, too. by aussersterne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just as importantly, the market has shifted. There is still a stable market for computing and it will continue to exist, but it no longer includes the home/casual user segment. Those people have gone over to tablets and phones (most all of the non-tech folks that I know now have an older laptop sitting dusty on their top closet shelf, unused for years, and don't plan to replace it; only about half have even bothered to get a bluetooth keyboard for their tablet, while the rest are perfectly satisfied with the onscreen keyboard).

    Business, tech-oriented people, the self-employed, creatives, and so on will continue to buy full-fledged computing hardware and to upgrade it over time, but this is a much smaller market than once existed for computing, where the market included basically every home and individual in developed societies. So some correction in sales was (and probably remains) inevitable over time.

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
  4. Some purposeful changes in PC designs by Pollux · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm just now in the process of replacing PCs in our school. We're buying Dell Micro PC's that you can mount immediately behind your monitor. When we throw in a SSD and fast-booting the BIOS, boot time for Windows 7 is less than 10 seconds.

    Now that PCs are smaller and faster, and electronic storage is becoming standard, it doesn't surprise me that they're becoming more appealing again.