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PC Shipments Hit the Lowest Level In a Decade (cnbc.com)
PC shipments are at the lowest levels since 2007. From a report: Gartner said this week that the PC market declined 4.3 percent during the second quarter. The research company said that shipments were at the "lowest quarter volume since 2007," noting the market dropped for the 11th quarter in a row. The report is in stark contrast to another from IDC in April which said that the PC market grew for the first time in five years. Gartner said HP has the largest global market share with 20.8 percent of the market. HP is trailed by Lenovo which has a 19.9 percent share, with shipments down a substantial 8.4 percent since last year. Dell, Apple and Asus finish out the top five players. In the U.S., Gartner suggests Apple's shipments were down 9.6 percent from last year. The research firm didn't give an explanation for why that might have occurred, though Apple was late to refresh its computers with the latest Intel processors. Upgraded Macs just hit the market last month.
Windows 10 did it.
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Most consumers are probably happy with their current PC's. They edit the odd document, use email, browse the web and that's it. A 12 year old Windows XP machine can do that very well still. Unless the machine actually dies, buying a new one is not on their mind or in their budget plans.
Even for companies, the current hardware they have works well enough for probably 90% of their employees. Upgrading hardware is not going to give them any increase in productivity so why buy anything new unless the old machine dies.
PC's are alive and well in business, but shrinking at home. They are too expensive and too much trouble to maintain for consumers, in part because Windows is a POC.
The younger generation can type on virtual (mobile) keyboards as fast as most PC typers such that they don't need a PC for email etc.; and tablets can have plug-in keyboards.
Table-ized A.I.
Samsung Galaxy s7 fortold in PROPHECY !
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
TFA does not link to the original data, and it is referring to results of only the last quarter.
Does it count only brand-name PCs or the industry as a whole? Are they counting revenue, turnover or number of units sold?
It does not say. Therefore you can't really infer anything from it.
The gaming PC community is the one most willing to spend a lot of money on new computers. That community is thriving.
While a good gaming PC today costs about the same as a gaming PC did twenty years ago, low-end PCs for office work have gone down in price considerably and there is little incentive to upgrade.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
A dual core box from 10 years ago is still plenty of power for what most people are doing. It still browses fine and plays YouTube without any problems as well. No big shocker there. Sure we have cores into double digits but clock speeds aren't any faster. Software has become bloated at the same pace. Go back 20 years to 1997. Your browser renders pages as quickly today as it did back then.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
People may be, but the big drivers of PC sales, particularly in the over $500 range or businesses, and in particular the enterprise, and quite frankly the extra cycles and RAM that come with newer desktops don't really confer much advantage for many applications. It's one thing if it's the guys in the engineering department who need hefty workstations, or the guys editing videos or running financial simulations, but the bulk of most offices are people churning out documents, emailing and working on fairly modest spreadsheets, and most of the hardware put out in five or six years ago (or even longer, as I can attest), can do that without issue. Even if you're making money hand over fist, why would you replace perfectly good hardware? Not replacing hardware means you make even more money.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I cringe every time I read one of these stories. It's not the 1990s anymore. The market for PCs is fully saturated, and any purchases are generally for replacement. Specs no longer double every 18-24 months, so replacement is needed only when something breaks or the GPU is no longer supported by the OS. I owned my last PC for seven years, and the current one will easily last that long.
I probably didn't need to replace my 2008 system as it still works just fine for most of what I do at home (mostly systems type stuff with lots of VMs on my R710), but I did get a pretty hefty kickback from the government last year so I initially spent about $2,900 on a new system that included a 43" 4k LG type monitor. Then added more bits over the year bringing it up to $3,600.
With the power I have now, for my more simple needs (I play a few older games and am looking forward to the Starcraft Reboot), it'll last a few years :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No one seems to want desktops these days, but for laptops -- go back to 4:3 screen resolutions. The 16:9 resolutions SUCK PERIOD.
I have no intention of buying any brand new laptop until screen ratios get back to what it was.
In fact, I would make it a hallmark of my business to NOT be like the others, while also not coming up with nonsense such as donating money to charities in the company's name. I'd simply sell a honest product or service and never cut corners.
I buy my computers from a small, local custom PC builder who operates this way. Super high-quality components (they constantly evaluate reliability and stock the components that perform the best over time) and excellent service, with the ability to precisely customize a PC to my needs. As long as they keep up the excellent performance, I'll never buy a PC from anywhere else. The catch? You pay significantly more for a PC than if you just buy some mass manufactured product from Dell.
What you're describing is certainly possible for small, independently owned businesses. When a company gives up control to go public, they also cede control to the wishes of shareholders, which may not be the same values as its founder. Stay private and you can run a company however you like.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
He's talking about watching pr0n. I think.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They don't, and that's part of the problem: it requires too much babysitting and preventative work to keep running right.
Malware is a big problem, especially when the PC is not configured properly or people visit too many shady sites or install shady software. PC vendors put all kinds of crap-ware on them and if you don't remove it, bleep often happens down the road.
About a year ago my Windows 7 PC couldn't get Windows updates; a bad update file jammed further updates. It took me several hours of trouble-shooting to finally resolve it. If I had ignored the problem, like most consumers would, security patches wouldn't come through and it would probably get breached within a few months.
There's other oddities I won't go into here.
Table-ized A.I.
Why I haven't upgraded:
Conclusion: Unless you're a gamer your old PC is fine.
Let's see, Intel and AMD's offerings have been complete shit until very recently. your 10 year old i7 is absolutely fast enough and in some instances as fast as a i7 computer from 6 months ago.
Only recently did both chip makers get off their asses and offer any kind of a performance boost that will make a difference and get people interested in buying a PC.
Watch sales to double in the next 12 months.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.