PC Sales Are Flat-Lining 485
DavidGilbert99 writes "Gartner has released figures showing that PC shipments globally declined 0.1 percent in the last three months, making it the seventh consecutive month of little-to-no growth in the PC market. This was despite the launch a number of new Ultrabooks, the much-vaunted slim-and-light platform promoted by Intel. The decline has been put down to the poor economic situation around the globe, increased spending on tablets and smartphones instead of PCs as well as the imminent launch of Windows 8, making people hold out on updating their PCs."
Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think that word means what you think it means, Timothy.
(What a shocking thought...)
Or maybe: (Score:5, Insightful)
We've already all got computers?
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
US Car sales are down. House sales are down. Employment is flat. Why should PC sales be different?
Re:Time to trade in my PCs? (Score:5, Insightful)
PC speed improvements just aren't that noticeable these days. They are also much more reliable than they were 15-20 years ago.
I think people just got smarter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time to trade in my PCs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly though, I bought an I7 desktop almost two years ago with 12Gb of memory and a pretty good graphics card. I haven't found any reason why that PC isn't still fast enough for about for of anything I use it for today. This compares to ten years ago when a two year old desktop simply cried with the lowest settings of the newest computer games.
Exactly.
With many PC games in recent years targeting DirectX 9 for easier Xbox 360 portability, any halfway decent hardware can run the latest games.
It'll be interesting to see if the next generation of consoles causes a ripple into the PC game market as well, bumping up the minimum specs new games.
Re:Time to trade in my PCs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of that can be blamed on a lengthy console generation. Most games have to sell on the PS3/360, consoles that are now around six years old. Developers aren't going to spend extra millions making a game that can really push modern PC hardware, because that gives them no edge on the more lucrative console market.
When the next generation of consoles comes out, I expect PC games to immediately jump in hardware demands.
It's not entirely based on this, though. Display resolution's another thing - we're getting close to "as good as a game can look in 1920x1080, 60Hz". If 2160p displays suddenly become universal, you'll see the rest of the computer having to work harder to keep up.
Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of buying computers built to last a year so you'll buy them over and over again, people are buying computers that actually have durability.
Hence, less buys.
More that computers simply *are* lasting longer.... unless your OS is festooned with viruses or you want to play the latest and greatest games on the market, there is absolutely no reason you can't do everything most users do with computers on a 8-year old hardware. And the first of those issues can be addressed by either reinstalling the OS or simply fixing it (or paying somebody to do so).
Couple that with a more "savvy" user who's more likely to be aware that viruses exist and Windows offering people free antivirus, and it means that the majority of PC users simply have no impetus to buy a new computer: their old one is good enough for angry birds and facebook.
I don't know if they'll even go down (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll just stop going up much. New computer technologies don't seem to kill off older ones, just make new markets. I mean it turns out that we have more mainframes today than when we had only mainframes, however that still isn't very many and there isn't any growth in the market. But it isn't dying.
Same deal with PCs likely. We'll reach saturation and they won't really drop, they just won't grow.
Ultrabooks suck (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
> A brand new machine is hardly better than a 5 years old one, so why replace them before they break completely?
If that is your attitude you probably are one of those people I was talking about who needed a tablet all along.
A PC built today is actually a lot better than one from five years ago, especially if you spend the same money. But if all you are doing is running Firefox on it you won't see much advantage. Or for that matter, if you are running Office you won't see a difference. But if you are pushing the edge you will. From a developer to a gamer, from 3d modeling to hi-def video editing to even sound mixing, a new machine will still improve productivity. And a new machine for a serious user now would almost certainly be equipped with multiple displays while five years ago that was still fairly uncommon.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah, flat-line only means dead in the medical industry. Everywhere else flatline means exactly how he used it -- there is neither advancement nor decline.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's kind of what a PC is for, isn't it? What, exactly, makes that so those people had no business buying a PC? Because they can't field strip it or debug it?
Why should they have to go away, and why isn't that a realistic expectation?
I was talking with my neighbor the other day. From what I can piece together, a Colonel since he mentioned a Major who works for him.
He was asking me why every other device in his house he plugs in, and then it goes. He doesn't have to dick around with the internals or know anything about it. He'd been through a lot of frustration with his Windows laptop, and said every time he tried to connect it to wireless it was a 30 minute job.
I've always thought it should be a perfectly reasonable goal that at some point, computers would need to reach a point of operating like toasters and televisions instead of something which comes in a kit.
Slashdot has this absurd bias that PCs should be magical devices which are reserved for the technology priesthood ... I think that's ridiculous. The reality is, pretty much everybody in modern society wants access to email, word processing, and basic web stuff -- and they mostly just want it to do it without a lot of fuss.
There seems to be a knee-jerk reaction that these people must be a simpering idiots who should just stay away from technology. Given my neighbor's rank and the other stuff he does, he's far from an idiot, but simply wants to use the damned thing to do some work. He's got more important things to do than worry about the technology.
In the end, I was hard pressed not to suggest a Mac -- because for all of those people who just want it to work and have no time to learn the ins and outs, that's kinda what it does well.
Having gotten tired of fiddling with PCs in my spare time to just make them work, increasingly what I want is something which is as easy to use as my TV.
Re:I don't know if they'll even go down (Score:4, Insightful)
Once that large base leaves, they would not be subsidizing the cost of Desktops/laptops. This will increase the price of PCs and it will drive more people away. Eventually Desktops will go back to be workstations used by engineers at work. I see very few hobbyists doing video editing and such stuff needing Desktops in the future.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
So what you are saying is maybe 10% of users have a use for all that power that modern PC's have and the rest basically need a dumb terminal from 1997 that can run the internet browser of their choice and office application?
Me I go about every 5 years between new machines mainly because i buy laptops and something goes and after 5 years it is better to buy new.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been doing development for and administration of a high end, technical software suite for about 10 years now.
We aren't completely to the point where I can do my entire job on a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard (if needed), but we are getting very close. And, from what I have seen, the remaining issues are not with iOS (etc) or the tablet's capabilities, but with the last several vendors joining the 21st century and supporting it.
I think most everyone will be using tablets for everything a lot sooner than people realize, even things that neckbeards say will never be done on a tablet. (I used to say those things too.)
Re:Flat-Line (Score:3, Insightful)
A computer is not a toaster. It can't be. It's inherently programmable. That's what it's for. A computer is not an appliance, it's a toolbox.
That's not elitism. That's just the nature of the beast.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, even as a more power-user (even at home where I do development), I've pretty much determined that I won't purchase another desktop without a serious need. Laptops are as powerful (my main development machine is a 17" beast) with the benefit of portability. Even media PCs tend to be outdated laptops now that I'm on my second (and third) wave of laptop purchases.....I'm the only one at my house that does much gaming, and my XBox takes a lot of that burden.....with my development laptop taking the rest of it. There are still some people who need the desktop, but it's getting smaller and smaller as they have to be uber-power-users.
Servers, laptops, and tablets have a future. Desktops are nearing the end of the line.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Flat-lining is plummeting towards 0 sales. The term you're looking for is 'plateau.'
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but a computer is a tool. Most of the people who have used them for the last few decades treat it as such.
Then it's time to change the beast, and have us in IT stop acting like pompous asses about the fact that "das blinkenlights are nicht for defingerpoken".
Apple has been trying to do this at least.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
But people who always needed the power of a PC will continue needing one so they aren't going to go away.
But we'll lose the economies of scale that have made PCs so cheap. That, and people who "need" a powerful PC are largely professionals, so they will buy expensive business class computers. This will, for lack of a better term, digitally disenfranchise a large fraction of computer users, and make locked down corporate controlled media delivery they only real use case for computers in the future.
Re:Ultrabooks suck (Score:5, Insightful)
So, by your own words, you think Apple has the best computer. But you won't buy one. I really can't fathom why.
I have a Galaxy Nexus phone. Apple has sued (successfully) to prevent this phone from being sold in the US. I will not financially support a company that attempts to destroy competing products through the legal system. It's true that the patent system in the US is broken and that lots of other companies abuse patents, but Apple takes abuse of the patent system to a whole new level of evil. No other tech company has gone as far as trying (much less succeeding) to outright ban the sale of competing products. Even Oracle in all their evilness did not order Google to stop making Android; they simply said "pay us 6 billion dollars".
Basically, competition is good. Choice is good. I have no problem with anyone choosing Apple products. But when Apple says Samsung may not sell this phone, I have a huge problem with that. If Apple feels that their patents are being violated, the correct remedy is monetary compensation, not a sales ban.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
Me I go about every 5 years between new machines mainly because i buy laptops
I'm hanging on to my laptop from 2006, and will do so for the forseeable future. You can't buy UXGA(1600x1200) laptops anymore, and WUXGA laptops are grossly overpriced, if you can even find one that's less than 17".
CPU and RAM have advanced to the state that it really doesn't matter what you get. The only component that actually matters is the display, and we have worse displays now than we did 6 years ago.
Re:I don't know if they'll even go down (Score:0, Insightful)
Today's mainframes aren't the massive machines of old, they're generic PCs running linux using distributed process, i.e. clusters.
Can't justify the cost of upgrading. (Score:4, Insightful)
To the average person the only recent perceptible level of improve comes from SSD, and most computers don't come with SSD. So most people don't buy new machines every 2 or 3 years like they use to. I remember back in the mid '90s to early 2000s, I would be building a new machine every 18 months because the level of performance increase could be seen (Rendition and 3dfx :( RIP) or felt Celeron 300A (oc to 464Mhz). Now, I'm hard press to see real improvement between my old Core 2 Duo and Sandy Bridge computers under daily operations.
Computers are now just appliances, if it ain't broke they're not going to be replaced.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what a tablet with a keyboard used to be called? A Laptop. Sure it's all touchy-feely, but that's not exactly difficult to add to a laptop, there just wasn'hasn't been the demand for it. Let's be honest, the Surface is pretty much a laptop as it is, just with a furry keyboard.
Once you take a tablet and add a keyboard and maybe a mouse for fiddly things and a charger because you're going to be using it for hours at a time there isn't any good reason not to just buy a laptop and have a proper computer instead.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Insightful)
And "Desktop" systems seem to be receeding back into the niches that need them... business, developers, gamers, power-users.
Well, if "business, developers, gamers, and power-users" counts as a niche now then I guess there will be a few businesses making quite a lot of money out of those "niches". That's probably a few hundred million people right there. By the way, you forgot image/video/sound editing and processing.
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that the lack of growth in PC sales has to do mostly with the fact that nobody has any freaking money. Seriously, it boggles my mind that finance pundits argue over the slow consumer economy when consumers are broke.
I just read an article about how a huge percentage of consumers in the UK have the equivalent of about $25/week to spend on anything besides necessities. That doesn't leave a lot of room for upgrading the household technology.
And still, the "serious" people all think the solution is more austerity, because having more broke people is somehow going to stimulate the economy.