Traditional PC Sales Continue To Slide (zdnet.com)

Sales of traditional PCs continue to decline, although the overall PC market is likely to grow slightly next year. From a report: Traditional PC shipments are forecast to drop by nearly eight percent this year, and another 4.4 percent in 2018, predicts analyst firm Gartner. Which means that, by 2019, 16 million fewer traditional PCs and notebooks will be sold than were shipped this year. However, much of this will be offset by the rise in spending on high-end notebooks like Microsoft's Surface and Apple's MacBook, so that the overall PC market will by 2019 be at pretty much the same level it was last year. Tablets -- defined by Gartner as basic and utility ultramobile devices -- will also decline over the period to 2019.

Comments

longer lifetime

[Anonymous Coward]

I think people are keeping their machines for longer and longer as time goes on.

Re:longer lifetime

[ZorinLynx]

Systems are not becoming obsolete as quickly as they used to.

I remember how back in 1995, a computer from 1991 was considered slow as hell and could hardly run any current software.

Now in 2017, a computer from 2013 is still perfectly usable and fast. The rate of performance increase has slowed to an utter crawl. The biggest advancements in recent years have been reduced power consumption and increasing density in solid state storage, and the latter can be an upgrade to your old machine.

Re:Builders vs Buyers

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to build my own computers to try to wring every last ounce of performance out of well selected components; nowadays the technology is so fast it just isn't worth it. I'll buy mass market commodity machines for dirt cheap the run circles around even the most ambitious builds I used to do.

It's a dying art.

Re:Builders vs Buyers

[ZorinLynx]

Yeah, it's sad but true.

Even with gaming systems, unless you're the sort who wants a flashy LED-lit clear-side case that looks like a spaceship, you can build a top-performing system just by buying a mass market machine and selecting the video card you want to put into it.

The enthusiast market is still there, but it's mostly for people who want their computer to look like it belongs on the set of Star Trek. I (sadly?) outgrew that once I was out of my 20s.

Re:This trend will destroy Firefox.

[Bert64]

The decline of desktops is more to do with average users realising that a complex computer complete with maintenance requirements and malware risks is not the best choice for someone who just wants to read facebook. These people are better off with an ipad, and they are also the sort of people who will just use whatever browser the machine came with not realising anything else exists.