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PC Industry Is Now On a Two-Year Downslide (theverge.com)
According to analyst firm Gartner, PC shipments have declined for eight consecutive quarters -- "the longest duration of decline in the history of the PC industry." The company found that worldwide PC shipments totaled 68.9 million units in the third quart of 2016, a 5.7 percent decline from the third quarter of 2015. The Verge reports: The firm cites poor back-to-school sales and lowered demand in emerging markets. But the larger issue, as it has been for quite some time, is more existential than that. "The PC is not a high priority device for the majority of consumers, so they do not feel the need to upgrade their PCs as often as they used to," writes Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa. "Some may never decide to upgrade to a PC again." The threat, of course, comes from smartphones, which have more aggressive upgrade cycles than PCs and have over time grown powerful enough to compete with desktop and laptop computers at performing less intensive tasks. Tablets too have become more capable, with Apple pushing its iPad Pro line as a viable laptop replacement. PC makers are feeling the pressure. HP, Dell, and Asus each had low single-digit growth, but Acer, Apple, and Lenovo all experienced declines, with Apple and Lenovo each suffering double-digit drops. Meanwhile, the rest of the PC market, which collectively ships more units per quarter than any of the big-name brands, is down more than 16 percent. Some good news is that 2-in-1 devices have experienced year-over-year growth. Kitigawa also notes: "While our PC shipment report does not include Chromebooks, our early indicator shows that Chromebooks exceeded PC shipment growth."
and she probably coulda kept using her 3 year old i5 but the school gives you grief if the laptops more than a year old. I can't imagine her ever needing a new pc until this one breaks, and with it's overpowered cpu and intel graphics that barely ever get used I'm not expecting it to burn out. Might need a new hard drive in a few years, but that's it.
Haven't really looked at the power jack. Lenovo's hold up really well. This one's a Toshiba so the jack might die. Barring that it's the last one she'll own until she graduates.
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The reality is CPU stagnation because CPU's hit a frequency wall and multi-core isn't good enough for the future of computing, basically we need a technology that re-enables single threaded performance. That's probably a good 50 years to a century away though.
So the market for poorly made crapware infested lenovo machines dropped AND the over priced apple workstations?
well i'll be damned.
I'm buying a new Apple this year, either a full blown iMac, or if the wife lets me, a PowerMac. I want to but a new PC laptop too, but it has to run Win7, because just like W8, I won't own another with shitware on it. Been out looking, but of course, no one local is selling a new laptop with an actual working operating system, like W7.
Wanna watch PC's sell again? Rework Windows 7 into a new and working OS, one that you control the updates on, and one that you control the telemetry.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The reality is CPU stagnation because AMD pulled a Pentium-4, and Intel decided to get in touch with its Green side, instead of pushing further in the Hz-race. So, what did we get Bob? Intel selling us the same processor over and over again, each time with more energy-efficient features. And the rest of the industry taking an LSD-inspired trip to nowhere with recycled ideas like 'replacing the x86' but with arm chips this time (the AMD CEO should have stepped down after making that public announcement), and so on.
We have, what, Germanium and Graphite, along with like half a dozen technologies that are 1.) proven to work (got the lab work to prove, IBM's lab work in a few cases), and 2.) need all but a phone call to begin implementing.
I'm the opposite. Only thing I do on my phone is check contact info for say a business or directions. I'd rather wait till get home or to my shop before I do any computing on my desktop. Even my 17 year old would rather do things on his desktop than on his phone.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
EM simulation of millimeter wave antennas and circuits. The tools will probably never run on the cloud.
My wife, who is sort of the idea non-techie user--follow directions, does virus scans, etc. is almost ready to abandon her Windows PC and see how well she can get by with an iPad. She is just totally ticked off at Microsoft. She bought a Windows PC with Windows 8 preinstalled, to avoid any possible upgrade hassles.
She found Windows 8 disturbingly close unusable, but gritted her teeth and started to learn it. Windows 8.1 managed to change enough things to be disorienting, without actually be an improvement. Then her PC was twice rendered unbootable by routine updates--in one case it seemed to be a case of dueling updates between Microsoft and HP, another time it was a faulty update that autoinstalled. (In both cases the "solution" was to boot in safe mode and roll back to the previous checkpoint).
Then came the forced Windows 10 upgrade, which again managed to change enough things to make the system harder for her to use without really improving anything.
Somewhere along the way the bloatware program she used to manage her photo library, which had come preinstalled and automatically associated to jpg files, so she was seduced into using it, stopped being compatible with Windows.
I think 10 to 10.1 has been painless, though.
The whole user experience of moving from Windows 7 to 8 to 8.1 to 10 has been so badly mismanaged that it is easy to see why anyone who isn't forced to use Windows might abandon it for a tablet.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
If the PC industry gets smart and goes with SSD's in their "powerful" machines and get that video card up to VR ready, you'll see people exchanging out. VR is going to be the next power drive.
Got divorced a few years ago, when I moved my PC the power supply went nuts and took my motherboard with it. Transferred the contents of the hard drive to my laptop, bought a PS3, and learned to love gaming in my la-z-boy with my cat in my lap. Granted, FPS aren't as good. Granted, there are no strategy turn by turn games out there (beat Civ Revolution couple years ago). I will completely admit gaming on my ps3 is nowhere near as good at it was on my desktop. On the other hand, I'm in a comfy la-z-boy with a content cat in my lap, on a 42" monitor 4 feet away, and that has to count for something.
I think Windows 10 is causing the slump, but not because people don't want it - it is because they already have it. There has always been a large segment of people who used a new version of Windows as the excuse to buy a new system; either because the OS needed the extra grunt or it was simply deemed to be the easiest way to upgrade for non-techies.
Along comes Windows 10, which basically threw itself onto everybody's existing systems. All of a sudden, there was no reason to buy new computer. As we all know, recent computer hardware is still fast enough to run average software so the benefit of buying a new system is miniscule.
I don't think you're a fool. Bought my wife a MBP last year. Our home is now Windows-free. No more "Honey, this update is taking forever, can't you do anything about it?" No more Windows Just Crapped Itself And Ate Her Report At 11PM on Sunday (and *of course* she has her semi-monthly department heads meeting at 9 the following morning...). And no more worries about what Windows is trying to pull with her data, and on my network. BLISS!!!
I thought I would resent having to pay too much for hardware that I know full well I can get for half the price. But after a year? Not a bit.
Best damn overpriced kit I ever forked out for, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Damn straight I would.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The problem is they are reading the data incorrectly, they are taking data from a BUBBLE and trying to claim that was the norm when in reality it was no different than the housing bubble, an anomaly that did not reflect the actual state of the market.
You see the bubble was caused by the "MHz wars" where a PC from a couple year, hell even a year ago at the start of the bubble, simply would not be able to run the latest software because of the insanely quick jumps in MHz. In just one 4 year period during the MHz wars my personal PC went from 400Mhz to 2GHz, 5 times the power in just that small amount of time! The consumer didn't WANT to replace their PCs that often but they did not have a choice because this years software simply ran like ass on last year's machine and probably wouldn't run at all on a PC two years old.
Now compare this to today, what mainstream software is there out there that won't run on a C2D or Phenom II X2 from 2008? I have a C2Q Media Center PC I use at the shop as my desktop and to do analog to digital video conversion...its got 4 cores, 8Gb of RAM, and a 2TB drive...why would I need to replace it? Even video gaming isn't immune to this as there are plenty of videos (and I have plenty of customers who can back this up) of playing the latest and greatest mainstream games on C2Qs and Phenom II X4s and they play at 1080P just fine, no issues.
The simple fact is even grandma has the equivalent of a fire breathing funny car for a PC which is spending a good 90% of its time in idle, so what would be the point of replacing it? Before my father passed away last year I looked into replacing his office PC, it was a 2.3Ghz Phenom I quad and I had a batch of newer systems in, surely he needs more power running his office than a PC from 2006, right? After collecting data for 3 months I found in reality most of the cores were parked most of the time and the system never got above 50% utilization...replacement simply was not needed.
The only reason you are seeing replacement in the ARM space is they are in the middle of their own MHz bubble which I would argue is already coming to an end as they too hit the thermal wall and users find they can't "feel" any difference between that quad core tablet or phone they got 3 years ago and the new octocores sitting on shelves. Bubbles pop folks, what we are seeing is NOT the "end of the PC" but it simply going back to being replaced only when it fails and I have a feeling we will be seeing the popping of the ARM bubble soon and it would have probably already popped if the industry wasn't forcing upgrades by refusing to support their older products.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.