PC Price Cuts Are Coming as Manufacturers Rethink Their Portfolios (zdnet.com) 42
An anonymous reader shares a report: According to a recent IDC forecast, the PC and tablet markets are expected to shrink. Shipments for tablets and PCs will decline almost 12% in 2022, the research firm reported, and are expected to decline further in 2023. But excess inventory is already forcing suppliers to heavily discount products and shift from the premium segment to more mid-range products, the analysts said. On the other hand, the report states that tablet and PC shipments will continue to remain above pre-pandemic levels. But uncertain economic conditions will threaten inventory and increase market saturation next year.
"The reality is that both PC and tablet makers will struggle in the coming months as not only are volumes expected to decline, but so will average selling prices," Jitesh Ubrani, IDC's research manager for mobility and consumer device trackers, said in a release. In October of this year, IDC reported that tablet shipments were down 8.8%, signaling the fifth straight quarter of the tablet market's decline. This market contraction followed two years of massive growth, which can be mostly attributed to economic factors.
"The reality is that both PC and tablet makers will struggle in the coming months as not only are volumes expected to decline, but so will average selling prices," Jitesh Ubrani, IDC's research manager for mobility and consumer device trackers, said in a release. In October of this year, IDC reported that tablet shipments were down 8.8%, signaling the fifth straight quarter of the tablet market's decline. This market contraction followed two years of massive growth, which can be mostly attributed to economic factors.
Only pre-built desktop... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think you need to separate this idea of building a computer being something you need to think about, vs what you actually said "it's getting complicated these days".
You literally have never been able to randomly plug components together. It has always required some level of research, that includes things such as selecting power supplies. The difference is these days after you select the components and plug them in it just works, whereas in the past you had to go through a complex configuration process. Bo
Re:Only pre-built desktop... (Score:5, Informative)
and things are getting quite complicated these days.
Really? From my point of view they've gotten a lot simpler. You no longer need to adjust DIP switches or jumpers to configure a processor. Most of the stuff that you REALLY need is built into the board (eg, no separate sound card or NIC anymore unless you really want to go premium). The number of storage devices has shrunk dramatically: instead of a floppy, a CD-ROM drive, and a hard drive (all with their own data + power connections) you plug in one M2 SSD card and you're done.
In general its easier than ever to build a PC. And the benefit for me is the same as it always was: its not that its much (if any) cheaper, but a PC built from standard components can always be upgraded or repaired with standard components. With a Dell or many other PC makers you will often times end up with a weird case and/or motherboard form factor, non-standard power supply footprints, and few if any expansion slots if you want to add something. If my power supply fails I'd much rather just go shopping for a good regular ATX power supply rather than one specifically for the "Dell Inspirplex 3713 Series".
Granted - for corporate/business use - you'd be dumb NOT to use a pre-built vendor like Dell, but for home use if you're capable of it have always preferred self-assembled.
Re: Only pre-built desktop... (Score:1)
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and things are getting quite complicated these days.
Really? From my point of view they've gotten a lot simpler. You no longer need to adjust DIP switches or jumpers to configure a processor. Most of the stuff that you REALLY need is built into the board (eg, no separate sound card or NIC anymore unless you really want to go premium). The number of storage devices has shrunk dramatically: instead of a floppy, a CD-ROM drive, and a hard drive (all with their own data + power connections) you plug in one M2 SSD card and you're done.
In general its easier than ever to build a PC. And the benefit for me is the same as it always was: its not that its much (if any) cheaper, but a PC built from standard components can always be upgraded or repaired with standard components. With a Dell or many other PC makers you will often times end up with a weird case and/or motherboard form factor, non-standard power supply footprints, and few if any expansion slots if you want to add something. If my power supply fails I'd much rather just go shopping for a good regular ATX power supply rather than one specifically for the "Dell Inspirplex 3713 Series".
It's even worse than that... For decades everything only goes in one way, not even a chance of plugging something in backwards.
I'd never buy a pre-built gaming PC, but lets be honest most people buy laptops these days and they're all considered PC's for accounting purposes.
That being said, I bought my mum a cheap 21" all in one from Acer and she loved it.
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If I ever have to buy a pre-built, Dell is on my shitlist.
They use all sort of proprietary connectors, etc so you can't even upgrade anything more then the RAM or HDD.
The PSU has such tight tolerances that if you add or upgrade a GPU, you need to change the PSU, which either does not follow the ATX size / form factor and the power connectors are wired up in a proprietary manner, so it will not work with anything else, and neither will any standard ATX PSUs work with whatever motherboard they supply the syst
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I've only bought one pre-built desktop in the last 25 years or so (a slim Dell to use for pfSense about a year ago), after getting totally hosed by a "boutique" dealer. I only build them now, and for the most part, they run Linux.
The last dell I encountered used proprietary connectors inside, so I needed a special dell cable to connect a normal sata hard drive.
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Wait (Score:2)
I don't think Jensen got the memo yet!
Uh, what? (Score:2)
Shipments for tablets and PCs will decline almost 12% in 2022, the research firm reported, and are expected to decline further in 2023.
On the other hand, the report states that tablet and PC shipments will continue to remain above pre-pandemic levels. But uncertain economic conditions will threaten inventory and increase market saturation next year.
So, you're gonna be forced to cut prices to maintain sales volume? I've been waiting to build new machines for a LONG time, I don't think this applies to GPUs at all though, their prices are all still stupidly higher than pre-pandemic pre-cryptoscamgasm.
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Look at Land Rover.
They mostly do base models at feature-rich pricing. And you still can't find any to buy.
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$50,000 penis extensions are surprisingly popular.
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And not larding on options and not producing any of the base model just to jack up the price.
That always drives me crazy. I'll go on the manufacturer's site and the model will start at $20k but then check the local dealership and the cheapest one in stock is $32k because they're only stocking higher trim levels.
The majority of those upgrades are completely unnecessary and even the ones I'd want cost less to add after the fact (eg, dealer charges $200+ for all-weather floor mats - I can get them on my own for $75. The dealer cost to add running boards to my truck was $600 - I bought an aftermarket
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Nobody's mining on gpus anymore there's no money to be made. Virtually all the money was made on ethereum and it no longer does mining at all. It's got this wei
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Lead Times (Score:2)
Re: Lead Times (Score:3)
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Dell told me to expect to wait up to 3 months. Got in after 4 weeks.
Good to know.
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It depends on exactly what you want. We ordered 40 systems earlier this year and had them within 2 weeks because we weren't picky about exact specs. They have piles of some stuff sitting in their warehouses.
you don't need to buy an new one each year (Score:5, Informative)
you don't need to buy an new one each year and they really don't improve that much year to year
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I've only upgraded the storage to SSD (the HD died).
Re: you don't need to buy an new one each year (Score:1)
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Yeah - I'll be honest anything from 2009-10-ish onwards works just fine except for gaming (and even for gaming it might work depending on what type of games you play and how good it was when you bought it). Heck laptops seem to be getting WORSE over time as they chase efficiency over performance. There are a ton of laptops out there for under $300 that basically don't work IMHO due to dirt slow processors and woefully underspecced RAM (it should be a crime to release a NEW laptop with 4GB of RAM in modern
Re: you don't need to buy an new one each year (Score:1)
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Literally no one is buying a new one each year. But after 5+ years there starts becoming quite a significant change, and at 7-8 years you're likely ending up with OS support issues.
There are over 2billion computers in the world and with annual sales around the 300million mark it stands to reason that many of them are being replaced at intervals greater than 5 years.
Windows 11 (Score:3)
Ha! If PC price cuts become significant, maybe I can replace my rockin' gaming machine I bought 3 years ago that needs extra hardware to run Win 11, and the self-built I built in 2016 that would require a whole new mobo to run Win 11, that instead comes with Win 11 installed. Then I can cannibalize all the peripherals from the other 2 machines and have something of a science fair project.
The one from 3 years ago was bought at Best Buy and was an "IBuyPower" brand that came with a kickin' graphics card, water cooling, and... really rocks. But it will be obsolete in the next few years because it won't run 11. Install Linux and wrestle with learning that all over again? Maybe. Ditto the 2016 machine. Hey, when did I buy the Surface Pro 7? Dunno if it will accept 11 or not. That would be expensive to replace, and probably impossible to upgrade if it required new hardware.
Hating Win 11. Very satisfied with 10. Issue really needs to go away...
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Oh, and what I see coming is millions and millions of people with unupgradeable PC's simply continuing to use them anyway. Whatever nasty malware that goes unpatched by Win 10 maintenance will be spread all over the innernetz by these old computers, and there's nothing Microsoft or anyone else will be able to do about it unless the were to send malware of their own to nuke the old, unsecure computers. Of course doing that would earn someone a trip to the slammer for the most damaging computer virus in h
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maybe I can replace my rockin' gaming machine I bought 3 years ago that needs extra hardware to run Win 11
I'm genuinely curious what you bought 3 years ago that can't run Windows 11. Your CPU genuinely needs to be more than 5 years old for you to not have support for Windows 11. Did you buy your PC from a pawn shop?
The one from 3 years ago was bought at Best Buy
Ooof that'll teach me for not reading the entire post first. I almost wish you did buy it from a pawn shop.
It's sad we have to learn this in this way but let that be a lesson to you, when you buy something "kickin'" at Best Buy you're getting already well and truly out of date hardware. In some respe
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Surface Pro 7? Dunno if it will accept 11 or not.
Install Linux and wrestle with learning that all over again? Maybe.
probably impossible to upgrade if it required new hardware.
That has some nice hardware. It will run Windows 11 just fine.
Linux on the other hand has a lot of missing hardware support. Unless you install the linux-surface kernel, and even then multitouch and pen support requires building a custom kernel module (they haven't ok'd it for standard inclusion yet). Camera support is still a no-go. (Despite Intel having released the driver source for it's IMU4 chip.) And if you want any CPU speed beyond "limp home mode", you need a manual config file to be applied to t
Steam Deck (Score:2)
Do they count the Steam Deck as a PC shipment or a console or handheld like the switch?
Valve have shipped a *lot* of them. Heck, mine should arrive this week to replace the aging laptop the kids use for gaming. When docked you can easily use a keyboard, mouse and monitor and voila a low power desktop.
Meanwhile, Nvidia GPUs are going up (Score:2)
There seems to be a huge mismatch between supply and demand. I suspect Nvidia is forcing their dealers to hold prices high, regardless of sales numbers. At the same time, Intel is just producing space heaters with twice the power consumption and labeling them "new."
Amazon has best deals? (Score:2)