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

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."

Comments

Slow growth?

[fustakrakich]

Nothing a batch of cheap capacitors can't fix..

Obviously

[franzrogar]

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.

Computing plateau

[jawtheshark]

Really, it's just that: we're at a computing plateau. At least for most users. Twenty years ago, if you held onto your machine for 5 years, the machine was usually unusable with up to date software. These days? 5 years? No problem. I'm still using a i7-2630QM, which was introduced in 01/2011. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it and does anything I ask of it.

Same for my desktop, an AMD A8-3860, which was introduced in 07/2011. Does what I need, quickly enough.

Are these machines high end machines now? Absolutely not... However, the time of buying new toys just to have new toys, is over for me. Works for me, means: no reason to upgrade. Many people who are not into tech think that way. A few years ago, I helped a non-tech with her old desktop. It had died: caps gone up in smoke. I said: hey, it's about 5 years old, it had a good run. She: *only* five years? Non-tech people think differently (Ha!) These days I'd be pissed too if my machine died after 5 years of use.

It makes sense

[halivar]

Consoles used to be the budget alternative to PC gaming. Nowadays, the cost/performance ratio is not in console's favor. And consoles are only getting more expensive, while current and last gen PC prices remain pretty steady.

Re:It makes sense

[tepples]

That and more people have discovered that they're willing to settle for relatively simple point-and-click games not dependent on reflexes. These run well on tablets, phones, or otherwise outdated PCs.

Chromebooks don't count?

[zerofoo]

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.

Smaller market, too.

[aussersterne]

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.

Re:Smaller market, too.

[largesnike]

It would seem that the PC market contained passive users (people who browse, view, send) as well as active users (people who create content including programming). Over the last few years smart phones and tablets have been taking all of the passive users away, so the market has shrunk in size. I think that process is now pretty much complete, so we're now seeing the gradual increase in active users in line with a gradually increasing population.

Cap plague

[tepples]

The implication is that people are having to replace PCs due to capacitor plague. Between 1999 and 2003, some Taiwanese electronics manufacturers shipped electrolytic capacitors based on a faulty formula misappropriated from Rubycon, which caused the capacitors to fail much earlier than intended. By 2007, most affected devices should have already failed.

Some purposeful changes in PC designs

[Pollux]

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.