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News PC market slides 11.8 per cent in Q2 2015

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 10 Jul 2015.

  1. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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  2. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    Apple is in a unique spot. The results are not a big shock to anyone following the markets Intel Nvidia and AMD have all warned of lower demand. Dout people expected it to be this low though.

    Windows 10 will not be a savour most will do the free upgrade
     
  3. ZeDestructor

    ZeDestructor Minimodder

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    The PC is an incredibly mature market, with more performance than most people know what to do with, really.. A family memeber is still on a 13 year old 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo (13 year old!) and it can still keep up with the modern web (which, let's be honest here, is the most intensive thing the majority will ever run) with it's miserly 2GB of RAM, unlike phones which are still catching up in terms of performance, and Android and it's infinite hunger for RAM.

    The end result is that there's not much room for growth in the PC market: it's all about the replacements and upgrades (battery life being the usual one with the current machines), and anyone who claims otherwise is seriously deluding themselves.
     
  4. schmidtbag

    schmidtbag What's a Dremel?

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    There's beginning to be less of a reason for PCs. Seems to be a lot of people are satisfied with gaming consoles, while tablets, phones, and smart TVs are taking care of the vast majority of most people's home PC needs. For anyone who has a computer for productive work, they're probably using the same PC they've been using since 2009.

    The way I see it, the only reason to ever upgrade is to get something more power efficient, quieter, and smaller - that usually isn't what the average PC (desktop or laptop) does.
     
  5. Maki role

    Maki role Dale you're on a roll... Lover of bit-tech

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    From the ground it feels more like a market shift tbh. Mass sales of bread and butter machines are falling massively as more performance simply isn't needed. Other areas, however, seem to be growing quite well. PC gaming is becoming more and more popular, I would expect that boutique high end setups are ever more popular too (as evidenced by how many builders there now are, all of whom are busy). However, as a whole these areas clearly aren't making up for the lower bread and butter sales. It would explain (to an extent) why Apple is doing fine, they're sitting in the premium area rather than spread into all budgets.
     
  6. SchizoFrog

    SchizoFrog What's a Dremel?

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    It also has to be remembered that many Apple users but the next year's model just because they can.
     
  7. ZeDestructor

    ZeDestructor Minimodder

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    Agreed. YoY growth on both AMD and Nvidia's gaming divisions support that quite well. The you have the HPC market, is is exploding as more and more people can afford HPC for work purposes.

    I'm not so sure... PC gaming just keeps getting bigger, partly because the experience is better, but also to a lesser extent the lack of backwards compatibility on the new consoles - if you're upgrading and losing your old library, may as well get the more powerful system anyways.

    Sure, not everyone is a bit-tech modding-nut, but a not insignificant number of more mainstream have no issue paying 1.5-3k for a gaming laptop, and even more are willing to buy/build boring desktops, some of them even connected to the main TV, and deal with the ensuing noise and heat.

    On the side of phone tablet gaming, it seems to have settled quite nicely at current levels, in a bit of slow decline, really, as people wise up to the fact that touchscreens are crap as an input method, especially for games.

    Stuff like the Nvidia Shield looks more promising, but the slow sales suggests the market just isn't all there yet = by and large current buyers are very much the very tech-savvy who want the fastest devices on the market, bar none, not necessarily for gaming.
     

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