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PC market shrinks for the first time in a decade

CAT-THE-FIFTH

CAT-THE-FIFTH

CAT-THE-FIFTH

Caporegime
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It seems the PC market is starting to slow down:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9601247/PC-market-to-shrink-for-first-time-in-a-decade.html

Tablets and the general economic problems seem to have been the main reasons it seems.

Ultrabook sales have not matched what Intel has expected:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...lop-as-sales-predictions-are-cut-by-half.html

It seems even Intel is not immune from this:

http://newsroom.intel.com/community...07/intel-lowers-third-quarter-revenue-outlook

http://www.forbes.com/sites/narrativescience/2012/10/11/forbes-earnings-preview-intel-4/

Intel Corporation today announced that third-quarter revenue is expected to be below the company's previous outlook as a result of weaker than expected demand in a challenging macroeconomic environment. The company now expects third-quarter revenue to be $13.2 billion, plus or minus $300 million, compared to the previous expectation of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion.
Click to expand...

AMD is also suffering too:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...nings_Expectations_for_the_Third_Quarter.html

It looks like we need to respect our new tablet overlords!! :p
 
May be because people who buy desktops tend to use them for long time and don't need replacement.
I built my first PC back in 2010 and still using it and only updated few parts along the way.
 
WingZero30 said:
May be because people who buy desktops tend to use them for long time and don't need replacement.
I built my first PC back in 2010 and still using it and only updated few parts along the way.
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The figures include laptops too it seems! I suspect it is reflection that for 90% of users,even older CPUs are perfectly fine for their purposes.
 
I think as we enthusiasts (small minority) already know that we only usually upgrade almost entire pc if we want to run latest games or run specific software like 3d modelling cad, cfd, mathematical modelling programs etc. Even then the upgrade is usually after few years and not every year.

Majority of desktop users just use these PCs for running office, chatting on net etc. Heck even 10 years old pcs can run such programs.

As for tablet I think its just a new fashionable device for the moment and easy to use for todays lifestyle. Convenient to check emails, web browsing etc.
 
It amazes me that people can't go more than a year without upgrading to the latest iPhone or whatever it is they want. It never happens in the PC market.

The fact that newer CPUs overclock like beasts doesn't help either because people will do that knowing they can get extra performance out of a chip and it'll last them an extra year or more.

I wonder what it'll be like in five years time?
 
I've never found a single reasonable use for a tablet yet and I dont think I ever will. They are just a fashion accessory like an Apple product.

I think I will stick with my Nokia, Netbook and Desktop for everything...
 
Bacon? said:
I've never found a single reasonable use for a tablet yet and I dont think I ever will. They are just a fashion accessory like an Apple product.

I think I will stick with my Nokia, Netbook and Desktop for everything...
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you clearly have never used a tablet in the real world
 
MrMoonX said:
you clearly have never used a tablet in the real world
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Like Bacon?, I too have no need for a tablet. I looked into buying one about 2 months ago and found nothing I need to do cannot be done easily with my existing solutions.

In short I'd be spending money just to say I had one, which is just wasteful and vain.
 
Each to their own I think, I don't like techy phones I still use a 3 yr old nokia 5220. It makes calls sends texts, has basic inet, and has a sd card slot and headphone jack for music. I didn't have a laptop or anything portable just my main pc.

I was taking a 10 inch portable dvd player into work for nightshifts, and Its a great size screen but I was getting tired of converting files to mpeg/avi and then burning them onto dvd for it. So I was on the look out for either a cheap media player or a galaxy note.

Then I came across an 8" archos 80 g9 turbo using ti 4460 and although I never saw the point in tablets this puppy changed my mind on the whole thing. Its perfect for work, has wifi,and if you buy the usb module you can have 3g, 8gb internal storage, mini sd slot, hdmi out at 1080p, mini usb on side, full size usb socket on the back. It drag and drops files with windows, and has brilliant battery life. Played quite a few games on it and it runs them really well too.
 
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Bacon? said:
I've used quite a few, explain to me why anyone would want to use them for PC Tasks.
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My main interest would be in not being tied to a desk. Most laptops also keep you quite stationary and can be a little cumbersome/awkward.

Unfortunately no tablet so far has really caught my interest (my expectations are prob to high) but I dont think it's long before they are suitable for the majority of everyday pc tasks (some prob say they already are, but I want better).
 
"My main interest would be in not being tied to a desk. Most laptops also keep you quite stationary and can be a little cumbersome/awkward."

Looked at Netbooks or Ultrabooks then?
 
Bacon? said:
"My main interest would be in not being tied to a desk. Most laptops also keep you quite stationary and can be a little cumbersome/awkward."

Looked at Netbooks or Ultrabooks then?
Click to expand...

Desktop at home and netbook away. 99.99% of all usage covered.

Like many here, will update every so often as a hobbyist but in all reality do not need all the power I have most of the time.

A new desktop every three years would be optimal but every five or six years would probably suffice for most users.
 
Part of the problem is that modern PC components are too fast and "require" upgrade and replacement much less frequently.

I remember paying £2K for a top-end DX2 66 based PC in the early-mid 90's. It was fast as hell for 6 months but within two years it was a piece of junk. By comparison, more recent processors, HDD's, Graphics Cards and the like last much much longer. 5 year old quad-cores are still capaple of playing any game and providing a very good Windows 7 experience. Why replace something that isn't necessary?

Tablets and mobiles are not proper PC replacements. Most people with these gadgets also own a proper PC or laptop, but see not need to upgrade them whilst they perform adequately. Perhaps the biggest issue is that businesses are happy to sit on old PC's for much longer before replacing them. Heck, I work for an industry pioneering technology company, and we still use core2duo's within many of out office Desktops. They only get replaced when they fail.

The Market is saturated, and software is no longer pushing hardware.

edit: If Intel are suffering, AMD are in agony. Within the past six months Intel's share price has fallen by 25%, whilst AMD's has plummeted by over 70%. Within the past month alone AMD has lost 40% of it's value. I think AMD's processor arm could go bye-bye pretty soon, and I guess that would see Intel surge.

edit2: It is about time Intel cut prices to stir up demand. Other system components such as SSD's and Memory have seen massive price falls recently, but Intel's processors have stubbornly remained at the same level. A "last-gen" i5 2500K actually costs more than when I purchased mine on release day.
 
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riskyfrisky said:
It amazes me that people can't go more than a year without upgrading to the latest iPhone or whatever it is they want. It never happens in the PC market.

The fact that newer CPUs overclock like beasts doesn't help either because people will do that knowing they can get extra performance out of a chip and it'll last them an extra year or more.

I wonder what it'll be like in five years time?
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Tablets and phones can be overclocked too. My 1GHz Galaxy Tab 10.1 runs at 1.5GHz and my Galaxy Note @ 1.6GHz 24/7.

Phones and Tablets are like jewellery, largely unnecessary but people like to have the best and let others see that they have the best. PC's are more like underpants, much more essential but hidden away where few people can see them.
 
555BUK said:
Tablets and phones can be overclocked too. My 1GHz Galaxy Tab 10.1 runs at 1.5GHz and my Galaxy Note @ 1.6GHz 24/7.

Phones and Tablets are like jewellery, largely unnecessary but people like to have the best and let others see that they have the best. PC's are more like underpants, much more essential but hidden away where few people can see them.
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haha your analogy made me lol :p
 
It's not surprising, you have up and down slides in the market even in good years, but in bad years it shouldn't grow exponentially, 10% less sales is pretty large but theres been very little movement.

Intel, AMD, PC guys in general should be paying, or owning huge game dev's to make games that make consoles look like kiddies toys and bring games with massively more powerful physics/graphics to the market that pushes the sales of high end kit. Other software as well but games are a big push for kids/teenages pushing their parents to buy a high spec computer and upgrade more often.

But this was always coming, speed isn't the key factor in 99% of home computer sales, usability is. One cpu, even something 5 times faster than the current fastest single threaded core could do, would still be limited when a computer is constantly running multiple things. People bought new computers up to the point that you can play a high def video on one screen, game on another and have a bunch of webpages up on a third. Basically when multitasking became smooth, people had a completely usable computer.

That encode takes 4 hours or 6 hours, who cares its in the background. When it took 10 hours it wasn't the time, it was how slow your computer was doing everything else during those 10 hours. If it still took 10 hours but the computer was perfectly smooth doing everything else, no one would care.

The average home user can have a pc with basically no slow down no matter what they do, and with an ssd, that instant on/instant load feel. A new computer will speed up that 10 hour encode... but its completely pointless when you don't notice the encode happening anyway.

for PC sales to keep growing you need, new markets, new buyers, to keep the existing user base buying, you need software that will make a current computer look painfully slow.... and that isn't happening.

Tablets and the like are mostly pointless, but people live these lives where being able to post to twitter every 4 seconds wherever they are is important, even then its utterly pointless. Tablets are going through that "ultra usable" phase that computers did, the slow single core to the fast enough 2-4 cores and suddenly everything is workable on a small device... pointless but very useable for all those pointless things.

At some stage ARM will suffer the same fate, in 5 years, when the Ipad 6 through 17 bring higher prices, but the same size, weight, resolution and software with nothing new to do on them, people will eventually stop buying them. Same goes for a phone, and everything else.
 
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