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...)
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, he used it in the modern corporate sense. If sales aren't going up, Up, UP every quarter then they might as well be dead. Smaller players will begin to pull out, big players will see their share prices tank, etc. Tech companies are structured on the basis of ever growing sales and profits so the idea of a nice stable market would be death to them and they probably won't have time to restructure.
Longer term, sales will probably go down. For a long time millions and millions of people who had no business buying a PC were buying them because of the Windows monopoly, to get access to basic things like email, word processing and basic web/media consumption. Those users are going to finally go away and stop demanding that the PC be turned into what they wanted all along, a simple device without confusing options, flexibility or programability.
But people who always needed the power of a PC will continue needing one so they aren't going to go away.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nah... "flat sales growth" would be the corporate term.
Flat-Line means dead.
PC growth opportunities are going to require a major hardware improvement or architectural change (i.e. HP/Hynix is working on something called "Memsistor" where RAM is replaced with storage that retains state when power is removed-- and costs less to make than Flash).
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:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Flat-lining is plummeting towards 0 sales. The term you're looking for is 'plateau.'
Re:Flat-Line (Score:4, Funny)
That's not how it's used. Flatlining in corporate speak is a flat line. Sales aren't growing.
What you're thinking of is a death spiral.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Informative)
Nah... "flat sales growth" would be the corporate term.
Never listen to an AC. The term you were looking for is "plateaued", but you would see "flat-lined" in such situations as well. People may think "dead" but they will not actually take the meaning to be such, they would, in the context of this article, take it to mean a plateau, which is what was intended, so it would be correct.
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.
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.
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Re:I don't know if they'll even go down (Score:4, Funny)
I am a splleing and grammer Nazi, yoo insesntvie clod!
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Cray is a supercomputer vendor. Entirely different animal.
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.
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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)
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, Funny)
A computer is not a toaster. It can't be
Clearly you never used a first-generation Athlon.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Funny)
Lets try more obvious examples......
Why isn't a computer more like a table saw..... I turn on a table saw and all my wood gets cut! (fingers too if trying to use a table saw the most "users" use computers).
Why isn't a computer more like an automobile, I don't need to get a license to use it. and cars, well you just turn em on and nobody dies of drunk driving accidents.....
Why isn't a computer more like an Oxy-Acetylene Welding torch...
just turn on the valve and wellll I'm getting dizy and tired......
Why isn't a computer more like skydiving... well
Yes computers can and will a lot more auto configuring..... but lets not forget you don't just plug in 'anything' and it works....
Except a fridge..... I plugin my fridge and keep my pets in there, they auto configure............
Any thing can be bad when used wrong...
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Ok, three major strawman arguments in your post.
Firstly, no one is saying that all PCs should be dumbed down. That is the Chicken Little argument I referred to before on slashdot that the "elite" come up with as an excuse to bash less technically literate people or products that they see as a threat to their nerd cred or whatever it is that has them up in such a flap about it.
The second is the "Mac for those in denial" comment. It's an obvious troll, but the product line has a specific name. What you're say
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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.
Then either he isn't as intelligent as you make out, or there is something wrong with his hardware.
Slashdot has this absurd bias that PCs should be magical devices which are reserved for the technology priesthood ... I think that's ridiculous.
And I think that's a ridiculous characterization of techies' view of PCs. We want PCs to remain general-purpose computing devi
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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.
unrealistic...unless your goal is to make a personal computer not a personal computer. I look at it like this: if all the consumer electronics of the future are basically mini computers, and all the intellectual work I do is done on them, I want the final say in the nature of the software for them, otherwise they're not really mine. without that control, my limits are defined by the vendor's software-defined interests and not the limits of the hardware I purchased. your utopian position would prevent me (
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.
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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)
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.
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This is why tablet sales are exploding. Most people don't NEED any more than to browse the web or watch a video or read an eBook or play a simple little game.
Beyond iOS and Android devices, new ARM and Intel Windows devices are coming on line. Lots of new hardware and form-factors (spurred by both Android and forth-coming touch-friendly Windows 8) are coming this fall and through next winter. I imagine a lot of people are "holding off" to see what the next generation will provide... far more touch, in fa
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: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.
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> We aren't completely to the point where I can do my entire
> job on a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard (if needed)
Congratulations. You've just re-invented the wheel; or in this case a small-screen desktop. I'll keep my desktop and my netbook/laptop, thank you. BTW, what can a 10" iPad do that a 10" or 11" netbook can't do for a much lower price? http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?cPath=710_28 [canadacomputers.com] And exactly how much free open source software can you load up on your iPad without rooting it?
Re:Flat-Line (Score:5, Interesting)
And "Desktop" systems seem to be receeding back into the niches that need them... business, developers, gamers, power-users. Casual users will basically abandon them (and already largely have) for laptops, tablets, and portables.
Desktops aren't receding at all. Casual users aren't abandoning them. Didn't you read TFA? (I know, I know).
Sales have stopped growing. They've shrunk by 0.1%, but then we are in the middle of the longest and deepest global economic crash since the Second World War, so don't read too deeply into that. Tablet sales have sky-rocketed, but desktop sales haven't been touched.
PCs have had colossal growth over the last decade- that's partly because there were literally billions of potential users who didn't have one yet. Now that boom has finished, we're into a "steady market" phase- where people already have computers, and only buy replacements as needed. And even that is cooling off, as computers don't improve as drastically year-on-year any more- it used to be that a computer was obsolete 2 years after you bought it, now there are machines from 2007 which are still perfectly useful and usable.
That's going to hurt the forecasts of the Dells and HPs of this world- but it's not a judgement on the desktop/laptop form factor itself. That's here to stay.
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.
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Exact same story here.
I pushed my old-but-usable gaming rig and ancient-but-serviceable PowerMac into the closet a year ago, replacing them with a small shoebox desktop PC running Ubuntu... which I use as a home server/NAS/web box. It happens to hold laptop backup images and family photos, with occasional bittorrent-grabbing. It also charges my wife's iPod once in awhile.
My missus has a laptop, but she only uses Firefox, iTunes and Irfanview (basic photo thingy) on it - nothing else of note. Her usage patte
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.
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.
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Not for a reasonable price. I can get a faster processor, more ram, more HDD, and better everything else than my current laptop for $600. Everything else, except a better screen. I can get a better screen if I buy Apple, but not at a reasonable price.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:4, Funny)
I'll take that challenge: Lynx + RedHat 5.0.
It wont be gorgeous, but I could damned sure get there. :p
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Bullshit. No one needs a tablet. It comes without a keyboard and can only be used for buying more stuff -- hence its popularity in the Old Media. No one who uses a PC for traditional PC stuff like typing documents or email would be better served by a tablet. Very few people currently buy tablets instead of PCs -- they buy them in addition, because they're already online practically 24/7, and need something more suitable for the couch. And still, despite everyone already owning a PC -- more people are buyin
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Most people don't do those things, which means that a 5 year old PC is pretty much the same as a modern one. Chrome loading in 0.2 seconds instead of 0.4 is not a significant improvement.
Now that'll change in October. Then a 5 year old PC will be better then a modern one, since the old one won't have that Windows 8 plague infecting it.
Re:Flat-Line (Score:4, Informative)
Don't forget, a $500 monitor from today is larger, but with worse resolution, than your 2007 benchmark. The explosion of HDTV has regressed monitor resolution, even as the screens grow. I want to go back in time to when 19" LCDs at 1600x1200 was "standard" and at 21" and larger, you got more.
A 1920x1080 monitor (HDTV) has more pixels than a 1600x1200.
Beyond that, we ARE seeing 2560x1440 in the widescreen form factor and larger, even - you just have to be willing to spend more than the $100~200 "sweet spot" price for monitors to get that additional resolution.
As for form-factor, it seems some people just can't stop hating on any computer monitor that matches up to HDTV's 16:9 display ratio. Why is this? I have no problem with convergence... it greatly reduces manufacturing costs, resulting in lower consumer prices for quality monitors. Don't knock the ability to buy additional monitors for your setup, and spend less than what a single good 1600x1200 21" monitor cost.
CRTs vs LCDs also have changed the space available on our work surfaces, too.... as well as greatly reduced eyestrain.
So... could you buy a 2560x1440 30" monitor for $500 in 2007? I can get it for less than $400 today. I don't recall being able to buy anything with 2 megapixels for less than $500 in 2007. /Just don't understand all the misinformation people are willing to spread in their hate on 1080p consumer monitors.
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"PC" (Score:3)
It has an actual etymology: "PC" is a relic of the original "IBM PC" in 1981. The "IBM" got dropped when the first clones appeared about a year later. It was already just "PC" when the first Mac was sold in 1984. It became "PC" and "Mac" to differentiate.
I don't recall anyone referring to the (pre-Mac) Apples, Ataris or Commodore machines as PCs. Some might have, but it was IBM's box that popularized the acronym, and it has stuck ever since. "PC" means a computer descended from the original IBM standard.
The
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"PC" means a computer descended from the original IBM standard.
So, a Mac, then?
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No, it really does – it means reading a flat signal, not changing. I.e. when a ECG is flat lining, it's recording equal voltage across the heart because it's not being stimulated to beat. It does not mean dead (though with ECGs it can be rapidly followed by death).
Well... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
Gimme a Laptop Air that runs Windows or hell, Linux, and I'll buy it in a heartbeat...
OK, it's called the Macbook Air, and it runs Windows and Linux. Now off to the Apple Store with you. Bring your credit card.
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Re:Well... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Gimme a Laptop Air that runs Windows or hell, Linux, and I'll buy it in a heartbeat..."
It's called a Macintosh and any of them run Windows or Linux if you really want to downgrade to that. I'll stick to MacOSX.
As to sales, Apple is increasing market share while the others are flatlining. Why? Quality. I buy a Mac and it lasts a decade or more. We have 1999 Macs in our family that are still running fine. We just pass them down the line.
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"Ultra-books" are not sleek looking, nor thin (in most cases).
Yes they are and yes they are (though I don't have a particular fetish for thinness, myself, just weight).
This [cnet.co.uk] is a very nice machine, for instance. It's about the same price and weight as the closes Air, but the specs are higher. The build quality is excellent too. Basically you get a better machine for the same money. Runs linux beautifully too. It has amazingly good sound as well.
In basically every category it beats or matches the Air.
Ot ther
Time to trade in my PCs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Time to trade in my PCs? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think some of the reasoning behind the change from the late 90's early 00's i
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.
Re:Time to trade in my PCs? (Score:4, Interesting)
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all I really feel the need for is some more RAM
I upgraded the RAM years ago. I've found that RAM is really cheap shortly after a computer comes out. If you wait too long though, it becomes extremely expensive as the market dries up for the old stuff.
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I built a core-2 quad desktop about four years ago and with a recent upgrade to the video card (GTX 550ti) it's plenty of power for the stuff I want to do.
I looooove to window shop on Newegg for the latest fastest MB's and spiffy upgrades but it's just not something I gotta have. Maybe in a couple more years...
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I bought an i7 PC almost 4 years ago, first with 6GB and I upgraded it to 12GB, recently added an SSD. There is no reason to buy a new PC when 4 year old PC's are just as good.
The only reason I intend to upgrade is to get Thunderbolt, also the RAID controller in my system is borked and I would like to do striped SSD's so I'm looking to upgrade that as well. So once the Thunderbolt boards become commonplace, I may upgrade.
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.
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Good point... games are no longer driving the computer hardware industry. They are mostly console ports, with, at best, a few DirectX 10/11 effects tacked on after the fact, for the PC. (Often added later with patches, at that).
Graphics card manufacturers (Nvidia and ATI) are cranking out higher numbered products that are mostly just minor design improvements over the same old shit. (The performance improvement, say, between last year's card and this year's iteration with a higher product number wouldn't ju
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I've been building / upgrading my main computer when technology takes a big enough leap forward and prices are in a low point. Two years or so ago I build a new Athlon x2 2.8ghz machine with 4gb of ram. At the end of last year I gave that machine to my wife and built a new one with a Phenom II X4 @ 3.5ghz with 12gb of ram. The Bulldozer had just come out and prices on the older Phenom II's took a nosedive. Other than maybe adding some more ram or a larger disk I don't see any reason to upgrade anytime
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Or maybe: (Score:5, Insightful)
We've already all got computers?
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Or Tablets (which are not PCs)
Or Web Services (I know the cloud is hyped, but I know I have delayed in buying a new desktop because I am doing more work online.)
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
US Car sales are down. House sales are down. Employment is flat. Why should PC sales be different?
Re:So? (Score:5, Informative)
Why should PC sales be different?
Ask Apple, they went through the 2008 financial clusterfuck with flying colours. Same for some Android makers.
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Because in past recessions (~30 years) spending on technology has held up pretty well. Most of the time IT growth only slowed – it did not stop. That implies that technology generated a lot of productively gains. Now – today – maybe not. It may be that we have reached a level of technology where productive gains level out. Does a office worker need a 2nd computer?
I don’t think that is the answer – I think consumers are moving to tablets and Business is moving towards servers.
Flattening, not flat-lining (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, on a graph it will be a flat-line. But "flat-lining" is when someone's heart is no longer beating.
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Flat-lining means exactly a graph becoming flat, no matter if it's a sale chart or EKG.
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Flatline in an EKG means zero electrical activity.
Flatline in a sales graph would mean zero sales, not just sales being steady.
windows 8 (Score:3, Interesting)
Many consumers thinking of upgrading will no doubt be holding out until October when Windows 8 is launched, before upgrading their PCs. This obviously means that the Q3 results are likely to be similarly flat, though Ultrabooks, the second generation Ivy Bridge versions of which are being launched at the moment, could have more of an impact by then.
Read more: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/362375/20120712/pc-shipments-fall-ultrabook-flat-hp-lenovo.htm#ixzz20RKdxqyA [ibtimes.co.uk]
WOW I thing it's better to buy windows 7 now.
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Many consumers thinking of upgrading will no doubt be holding out until October when Windows 8 is launched, before upgrading their PCs.
Seems unlikely. Most people I think replace their machines when they (a) break, (b) get so virus infested that they may as well be broken or (c) become too slow for some task that they want to do or run out of space or something like it. I think if you asked the average PC purchaser when the next version of Windows was being released, you might be met with a blank look.
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I think you are both right.
The market has been flat for the past 7 months – so it’s just not people waiting for Win8. And I have heard nothing dramatic that makes Win8 a must have (Unlike the jump from XP to 7).
But it could explain the last quarter or 2. I know people who are on the fence about replacing an older computer and have decided to limp along for another 3 to 6 months or so until Win8.
I think people just got smarter (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think people just got smarter (Score:5, Funny)
I bought a Raspberry Pi, does that count? (Score:2)
Ultrabooks suck (Score:5, Insightful)
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So, by your own words, you think Apple has the best computer. But you won't buy one.
I really can't fathom why.
If you don't like OS X, put Windows or linux on it.
The Air is the same cost (or less) as other ultrabooks, so it's not price.
The Air is just as upgradeable as the other ultrabooks, so it's not expandability.
I guess I'll just scratch my head and look at you oddly.
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.
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You are correct that there is literally no way to avoid buying from all abusive companies. But it is possible to avoid buying from the most egregiously abusive one or two companies. That
PC's are like dish washers (Score:3)
you buy it and expect it to last for years no matter how cheap it is
for most of us the value is in smart phones and tablets which are much better at most tasks than PC's. i use my MBP to hold some photos and that's about it. between my wife and I most computer use at home is on iphones and ipad
Admittedly anecdotal (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know of anyone that's holding out on updating their computers because of Windows 8. Heck, I hardly know anyone that cares at all about Windows 8.
I do know several people who, over the last year or so, decided to buy an iPad to replace their aging computer rather than buy a new computer.
As others have noted, there are a lot of people that own computers but really have no need of one.
Windows 8 (Score:2)
.
I would think that PC users would be hurrying to upgrade before they can no longer get Windows 7 pre-installed.
2 main reasons i see (Score:3)
1 - is the economy
2 - people have finally figured out that they don't really need to participate in the upgrade treadmill.
4 PCs in 14 years (Score:5, Informative)
And if you just want to read your email, a smartphone will do in a pinch, but a tablet will do fine. Practically anything on the market will do it - doesn't need to be a top-of-the-range iPad. So only gamers are buying PCs. Businesses aren't - we have 5 year old machines in the office that still run XP and Office just fine. We don't need multi-core setups and uber-gfx cards to do Powerpoint and Excel. We have no upgrade plans for at least 3 years and we'll probably completely leapfrog Win7 when we do. PCs got 'good enough' a while back - no wonder the market's flattened out.
not surprising (Score:3)
Computers are cheap enough now that people in the developed and near-developed world already own them. So you just get baseline replacement sales. Developing countries people can't really afford a PC and a tablet/smartphone but they "need" a phone so they just buy the one device and use if for everything. I realize I'm overly generalizing but I'm a physicist +- an order of magnitude and I'm happy :)
I must be in the minority. (Score:3)
After years and years of using a laptop as my main machine, a year ago I built myself a no-compromise workstation.
The logic was simple: I realized that when I was out and about with the laptop, I never did much heavy lifting. When I got on the Android bandwagon, the need to use a laptop as a browsing/ssh/mail device just went away.
Now, when I anticipate being a loser and writing code at Starbucks for a change of scene, I grab one of the cheap netbooks we have lying around, VNC into my desktop, and off I go. Bonus: if it gets stolen, there's nothing of value on it. Double bonus: disapproving glances from Apple users due to the anti-apple stickers on the lid.
We have a tablet for the coffee table, and it mostly gets used for recipes, Facebook, and controlling XBMC. That's it.
It's just horses for courses. No one wants a general purpose PC for round-the-house drudgery, people with smartphones don't need laptops to communicate.
It all seems to come down to two questions. "Do you need a keyboard?" and "Do you need actual CPU power?" For many folks, it seems the answer to both is mostly no.
I wonder if my kid will ever build a PC.
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.
NEWSFLASH - Sales of Refrigerators Flatline! (Score:3)
The desktop computer is less disposable than it used to be. Average software resource requirements are not increasing so quickly relative to hardware capabilities as compared to 1995-2005. A computer purchased today with a modern (non-budget) processor, 6+GB of RAM, a $25 low-power discrete video card, and a Blu-ray drive will carry you for multiple years now.
Just like refrigerators, desktop computers are approaching "appliance" lifespan. This is a good thing for consumers and a secure thing for bearish investors.
US Sales 16M per quarter (Score:3)
The Gartner data shows US sales of 16 million units in the latest quarter. That is 64 million per year. There are 117 million households in the US, and 139 million employed people. So that comes to replacing a computer every 4 years for every home and job in the country. That does not sound like a dire situation, that sounds like a saturated market.
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.
One important factor is being forgotten (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, a lot of casual users are going to conclude (or already have) that a full-fledged PC is more than they need or can safely handle, and that a tablet makes a better computing platform. For Grandma who only surfs the web and checks her family's Facebook pages, a tablet is a better choice: more intuitive, good enough for the tasks at hand, less likely to catch a worm or virus. It's for more complicated tasks that a PC is required. (My mother, for example, does most of her web-related stuff on the iPad, but she still needs to use a PC to get photos off the camera, edit them, and post listings on eBay – the iPad apps are grossly insufficient for this task.)
But one thing a lot of people are forgetting in their haste to announce a "post-PC era" is the HUGE installed base of existing systems. Up until about 2006, the PC market was still evolving fast enough that users had to upgrade on a fairly regular basis. An average 2001 PC would be pretty bad at running 2006-vintage applications. But for most home and office users, PCs from the Core 2 Duo era onward have been good enough. They can do all the usual stuff (surfing, email, videos, Office, WoW and other simple games) without too much trouble, and multitask reasonably well since they are multi-core. Given that economic times haven't been that great recently, why would home or business users want to switch out perfectly good hardware that still does what they need? This in no way means that the PCs are going away, just that their upgrade cycle has substantially slowed.
I do think that the utter low-end of the PC market – the $300 shitboxes formerly epitomized by such stellar brands as Packard Bell and eMachines – is going to go away. And good riddance. Those users will mostly be better off with tablets. But high-end desktops, gaming PCs, and workstations are here to stay.
It's worth remembering that most of what people here on Slashdot usually actually buy is already niche hardware to some extent. Full ATX motherboards are a niche product. Intel K-series CPUs are a niche product. Discrete graphics cards are a niche product. But despite their low-volume status, we can still get this stuff at fairly reasonable prices. The only exception is the top-end flagships, which are substantially overpriced to lure people with more money than common sense.
Don't forget market saturation. (Score:3)
Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
FTFA: Apple sales up 4.3%
Rigghht... when has Gartner ever been wrong?
Apple's Mac sales fell (IDC) or grew (Gartner) last quarter [cnn.com]
Re:So, consumers are getting smarter then? (Score:4, Informative)
It's the latter.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Consumers are buying what they need. When you need a PC to do work (or play games) you buy one, when all you want to do is text, surf, share junk on fazebook, etc. you get a smartphone or tablet. Simples.