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.

Comments

Frost piss.

[Killall -9 Bash]

Windows 10 did it.

Re:Frost piss.

[DontBeAMoran]

Why do you say the latest Macs are shit? Are you talking about the non-upgradable RAM soldered to the motherboard, the low-end dual core i5/i7, the weak GPUs (if any), the pointless expensive toys (touch bar), the five years without upgrades for the Mac mini, MacBook Air and Mac Pro, or the fact that OS X started going downhill after 10.5?

Re:Frost piss.

[MightyMartian]

We're running Dells we bought in 2009 or thereabouts, upgraded to Windows 10 (I know I know). Other than the odd PSU or hard drive blowing up, the machines seem to be working fine for what they are; workstations dedicated to word processing, email and a bit of browsing. I wouldn't want to open really large spread sheets on them, but other than that, they do the job. Every year that we don't have to buy replacement hardware is basically money in the bank for us, and we have a replacement budget in place for total failures like the motherboard. I would expect that in the next year or two these units may begin to fail, so we're looking at new purchases in 2018-19, at which point they'll be ten years old.

And when we talk about replacements, we're not likely talking about new desktops, but rather going to PCs-on-a-stick like the Lenovo Ideacenters. Again, for many of these computers, we're really talking about wordprocessing, email and browsing, and the advantage of these units is there almost disposable, and providing they last three or four years (we've had some test units running without issue 24 hours a day running videos and slideshows on large flat screen monitors for over a year now), we'd still be ahead of the game on the hardware side.

So our medium and long term strategies don't involve replacing $400-$600 desktops with similar models. We'll still be buying laptops for the road warriors and certain departments, like finance, where a bit more muscle is needed to run spreadsheets, will still see traditional PCs, but our days of buying a bunch of $500 Dell or HP desktops or towers on a regular refresh are pretty much done, and really, I would expect by the time we do do our big upgrades in 2019, small form inexpensive PCs will probably be a helluva lot more capable. Who knows, maybe in four or five years maybe we won't be buying Windows machines at all.

Re:Frost piss.

[angel'o'sphere]

What is crappy graphics on OS X?
Eve Online looks on OS X the same as on Windows, so does world of warcraft.
Neither my Mail.app nor Safari.app need a special graphics card.

Never saw crappy on any computer since 20 years anyway, in what strange world do you live?

No longer a home appliance

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:Obvious really.

[MightyMartian]

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 Blame List

[Anonymous Coward]

Why I haven't upgraded:

• 1. BAD GUY: Microsoft. Their obnoxiousness on Windows 10 and built in spyware has been too much. I'm not upgrading to that piece of shit and now my development is all for the web anyway. HEY MICROSOFT: You're idiots. Instead of giving people a reason to upgrade you gave them a reason to NOT upgrade.
• 2. BAD GUY: Shit laptop keyboards. Older laptops have better keyboards than than chiclet "Island" crap. HEY MANUFACTURERS: No one gives a fuck about "thinner" any more. Try "better" instead.
• 3. GOOD GUYS: Intel and AMD have made CPUs so powerful that even a 5 year old CPU has more than enough juice.
• 4. GOOD GUYS: Cellular Phones. Fine for anything but typing. See 2.

  Conclusion: Unless you're a gamer your old PC is fine.