Global PC Shipments Fall in First Quarter

It seems it has started : the forecasted PC decline is happening.
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/gartner-global-pc-shipments-fall-52-20150409-01193

This is not yet terrible, with still 77 millions unit sold, but the writing is on the wall. No doubt PCs will continue to sell for a very long time, but yet, the public seems either to hold onto their units for a longer period, or tablet sales and the generalized use of the phone as the main computer is starting to chip at the PC.

Should we port all our apps to iOS ? Maybe not, but being aware of the surroundings seems appropriate.

A phone / tablet is great for a lot of media consumption - youtube, blogs, mail etc
And for some kinds of media creation - video, photo’s, and a fair number of other tasks.
But there are tasks which I have a difficult time seeing myself, or anyone, doing solely on a phone or tablet for some time.

So while the general consumer machine might shift to a phone / tablet there will still be a need for a “PC” of some form factor for a while (even a tablet hooked to multiple monitors, keyboard, etc is still a PC - just one thats quite portable as well)

[quote=180105:@Norman Palardy]A phone / tablet is great for a lot of media consumption - youtube, blogs, mail etc
And for some kinds of media creation - video, photo’s, and a fair number of other tasks.
But there are tasks which I have a difficult time seeing myself, or anyone, doing solely on a phone or tablet for some time.

So while the general consumer machine might shift to a phone / tablet there will still be a need for a “PC” of some form factor for a while (even a tablet hooked to multiple monitors, keyboard, etc is still a PC - just one thats quite portable as well)[/quote]

True, this is a bigger problem for Microsoft though, they have almost no presence in the mobile space, and Apples desktop sales keep going up.

The first generation core I7 system I purchased several years ago still works sufficiently well that I don’t need to change it. It used to be that the system you bought 6 months ago was outdated. Lately, new processors generations do not offer very noticeable improvements . The old model works just fine, the new model does not offer huge improvements. Why replace the old one? One gets a much larger improvement boost by replacing the old magnetic hard disk with a SSD device, for much less money than a whole system costs. This is primarily why sales of PC’s are slowing down.

I read elsewhere that tablet sales as a whole are also slowing down, same with smartphones in general. I suspect the reasons to be similar in that space, too. Owned models are currently good enough, new models do not offer enough real improvement (once you wipe all the hype off) to justify the expense.

[quote=180146:@Louis Desjardins]The first generation core I7 system I purchased several years ago still works sufficiently well that I don’t need to change it. It used to be that the system you bought 6 months ago was outdated. Lately, new processors generations do not offer very noticeable improvements . The old model works just fine, the new model does not offer huge improvements. Why replace the old one? One gets a much larger improvement boost by replacing the old magnetic hard disk with a SSD device, for much less money than a whole system costs. This is primarily why sales of PC’s are slowing down.

I read elsewhere that tablet sales as a whole are also slowing down, same with smartphones in general. I suspect the reasons to be similar in that space, too. Owned models are currently good enough, new models do not offer enough real improvement (once you wipe all the hype off) to justify the expense.[/quote]

Tablets have slowed down http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2954317 but the forecast for 2015 remains 233 Million units, as compared to 77 Million PCs.

But what you say is perfectly true. Analysts think tablets will not be updated as often as phones.

As for PCs, Moore’s Law insured for the longest time regular upgrades and renewal, whereas the multicore thing does not mean in most cases such a quantum leap in performances. Certainly not doubling execution time.

One of the main challenge for years to come will be for system designers, to find a solid, more efficient and elegant way to distribute tasks amongst parallel processors. For the moment, it falls on the application to manage the cores. It is well and good to have 8 cores, but each is not much faster than a Pentium, and rare are the applications taking full advantage of the 8 cores on the latest generation. Case in point : Xojo uses but one core. Hopefully after 64 bit we will be able to use more cores. Eve, just one would be a huge improvement.

I could not find a comparison of performances of one core in a recent i7 against a single core Pentium (or one core in a dual core). Amazingly enough, it went up to 3.7 Ghz or so, when the most common i7 usually stays under 3 Ghz. I do have a PC at 3.4 Ghz, but frankly, I see little improvement as compared to my previous machine as far as Xojo is concerned.

Edit down. How surprising.

When I wrote “Certainly not doubling execution time.”, I meant “Certainly not doubling speed.”

Case in point: one of my clients is a large civil engineering company. It’s difficult to see how its engineers could design bridges and tunnels or write 300-page project proposals, or its legal department write massive contracts, on a tablet, Its IT director told me last year that the PC renewal policy was now 5 years instead of 3, mainly because new PCs offered little or no significant performance improvement. The only reasons for earlier replacement are due to hardware failures. I suspect that this, rather than the advent of tablets and smartphones, is the reason for the PC decline.

That’s my take on it. I’m running on a 2011 Quad Core iMac. Yeah, I could get something newer and faster but the current machine is ‘good enough’ for my development work. Getting something faster won’t help me develop Xojo applications faster given the current state of Xojo.

I suspect this trend will continue.

Because I get to write off the old one, hand it down to someone and buy myself a better equipped one with a bigger SSD, more memory, better graphics cards with more VRam, nicer screen and maybe a faster processor

And it wont have finger prints all over it either :stuck_out_tongue:

US & Euro sales maybe ?
Developing nations (China India etc) have the potential to sell vastly more devices that either of those markets
Your next billion internet uses are going to be Indian, Chinese or some mix.

I think
that a lot of private users only need tablet and phones and less uptodate PC’s. My grown kids have both older Laptops (Win and OSX) but seldom use them now. They only use them privately, when they have to write letters or articles.

On the other side in the companies the computers are used to input a lot of data manually, design or create products/plans. With keyboard and mouse this is the most effective solution now, so that Desktops and Laptops are used there. If there are other more effective and also robust input devices in the future, that may change the game and the mobile devices can replace the desktops and Laptops in this area.

For developers, the million dollars question is whether the slow down is indeed due to non renewal or to real switch to other types of devices. I have the gut feeling that right now, the slow down is due mainly to non renewal. Processor speed has not grown enough to justify new sales. It probably needs double to be any significant. Besides, the PC is probably not the hottest item anymore. Users will probably rather buy a tablet, a new phone or the Apple watch, and keep their old PC. I see myself with my old white MacBook and if I do find the new golden one attractive, I have found no excuse to buy it yet.

Now, how many apps does an aging PC/Mac will get a year ?

I just did this and it feels like a whole new machine. Best upgrade I ever bought in 35 years of computing.

Another thing to take into account is virtualization and cloud computing. I’ve not owned a PC for a couple of years now and yet I spend a large portion of each working day coding on a windows server! I’m either connected to VM operated by my employer or one offered by MS in their Azue environment. Like most of my collegues I work of a Mac.

I dont think tablets or smartphones are eating the pc market, no matter how powerful they get , they are (used as) toys and most people use tablets for playing games or othere uselles stuff.
I dont know anyone who uses tablets for doing real work for example excel sheets or anything similar

Oh I’ve not owned a windows PC since my older Vista machine.
However in the report they meant “Personal Computer” not just Windows PC’s
And in total they ESTIMATE PC shipments are down but there are difference in Windows PCs vs Macs vs “others”
This report didn’t detail what their estimated #'s for each are
Gartner IDC et al are notorious for being horribly wrong in their estimates

[quote=180852:@Horacio Vilches]I dont think tablets or smartphones are eating the pc market, no matter how powerful they get , they are (used as) toys and most people use tablets for playing games or othere uselles stuff.
I dont know anyone who uses tablets for doing real work for example excel sheets or anything similar[/quote]
I do. But it definitely isn’t the norm
However the report doesn’t make the distinction between enterprise vs consumer sales
Just overall shipment they estimate were down

If the iPad had existed when my folks first really started traveling a lot they would probably have had one.
If it were now an iPad would easily replace mom’s laptop for what she needs. Email, Surf the web a bit. Facebook & such. And listen to a few online radio stations & podcasts.
For an enormous number of people they are consumers and thats about all they need.

[quote=180852:@Horacio Vilches]I dont think tablets or smartphones are eating the pc market, no matter how powerful they get , they are (used as) toys and most people use tablets for playing games or othere uselles stuff.
I dont know anyone who uses tablets for doing real work for example excel sheets or anything similar[/quote]

Back in the eighties, PCs and especially Macintosh were routinely referred to as toys. We know what happens.

The Office Suite was ported to Mac, and it stopped being called a toy. PCs started connecting to mainframes, and they started to be taken seriously.

Corporations haven’t found yet the applications they need, and present tablets are just a sample of what can be done. A 10" pad size tablet is a joke when letter size one is possible. Connection limited to (slow) WiFi and lack of serious data storage are another hurdle. They may even need a new OS that caters to something else than games. iOS and Android are not really made for anything but to milk users on app stores.

With over 200 millions tablet units versus 77 millions Pcs, it would be foolish to think they will not impact the professional market at one point or another.