News PC sales suffer biggest slump on record, claims IDC

I think the rise of tablets is more to blame than Windows 8 - the rise in popularity of tablet devices must be having more of an effect than the relative failure of a new version of Windows. After all, so many people only use their PC for Internet and email, things which most tablets are perfectly capable of handling - for a fraction of the price of a new PC.

 

A laptop with touchscreen is a great thing with Win8 but cheap options just haven't materialised. However, I was emailed an i3 ASUS touchscreen laptop this morning for £389.99 which isn't that bad at all. The retail outlets especially PCWorld are sitting on their stock of none touch laptops and keeping the prices the same.

 

Now that's a delivery method I could learn to love. Instant delivery cheesecake.

 

Laptops aside, I've only ever bought one PC; that was more than twenty years ago. I don't imagine many people are considering buying a traditional PC any more, which is does make me wonder about the longevity of the components market for enthusiasts.

Tablets are much more "pick up and put down" than a laptop, and (even I admit) a better option than a netbook, but I'd still rather have a laptop's functionality. The i3 Asus touchscreen laptop Snips refers to is certainly more appealing to me than any high end tablet.

 

Its seems to me this maybe a case of the perfect storm, XP having its support extended a while back so people not upgrading, Windows 8 without the familiar desktop+start button without using extra programs.

Cheaper tablets that do what people need, the current economic climate, the raft of new consoles not released yet pushing games and hardware to a new level.

 

Corporations probably just cant justify cramming a sky scraper full of pc's anymore on account of the fact everyones broke.

 

Havent used my laptop since I got my ipad 16 months ago. My PC is based around a 10 year old 3ghz P4 but I still cant fully justify replacing it.

 

Blaming it on Win8 is a cheap shot at Microsoft imho.

The bigger reason is tablets and smartphones. All those people who only use the interweb for communication and media-playback don't really need anything more powerful or bigger.
A PS3 or Xbox is sufficient enough for this task aswell, while a gaming-device to play the newest titles.

Another reason is the economy ofc, as lots of people simply don't have much money to buy a new PC and keep using their old ones, which are still powerful enough for most tasks. A C2D E8400 based PC isn't that slow really, when only doing some office or even some video- or photo-editing of your last holiday.
The tech-people allways forget to look at the normal PC-users, who are doing perfectly fine with their 6 year old PCs.

I'm undecided myself aswell, if I should buy new hardware, when Haswell etc gets released, or if I simply wait for the 14nm parts some years ahead.
And now that I've basically stopped playing games, I couldn't care less about the newest developments. And alot of people have moved from PC-gaming to browsergames and mobile gaming on their smartphones and tablets aswell, so the market for PCs shrinks even more.

Wait for next years analysis, when the new consoles are released. PC-sales will drop even more.

 

I have a friend that is going to buy a new "hardcore pc", because his last one lasted 5 years (Q6600, 8800GTX).

HW is too ahead of Software, maybe with these new consoles games get pushed harder and will "make" people buy new pc's or components

 

Whenever I did my current build 3 1/2 years ago I feared it may be my last. I am still unsure whether or not to go haswell this year or wait another year for broadwell but I WILL be upgrading in the next 18 months, which I find some comfort in. The decline was not as severe as I had feared.

I use my PC often and for heavy gaming so I'm happy to put the cash in. Although I fully understand why most people don't upgrade or buy new hardware very often as unless you are gaming a Core2Duo/Athlon X2 5500 era chip is fast enough for most tasks.

Then recently watching my parents and sister get hit with virus's makes me think "why do they put up with this at all?" as a tablet would probably be a better option for them. The OS's just aren't quite there yet but give it a year or 2 they'll have no reason to go PC.

While PC gaming has seen a great upsurge the last 2 years I do fear that when the masses stop buying PC's, parts for a gaming rig get too expensive. I hope there's a decade left yet but I have my doubts :/

 

It has nothing to do with Windows 8. Our website has just undergone a massive overhaul with HTML 5 in order to be accessible to tablet and smartphone devices. Some people may be surprised at how many homes no longer even have a PC or a Mac, and only have a tablet device. The type that like to say "I've got an iPad".

That's nice for you.

Anyway, consumerism, it's for idiots.

Then you have the other majority as mentioned that are totally happy with that they've got. A 4 to 5 year old PC will happily do everything most people want it to do. We are at that stage now where an ageing Core 2 Duo system still holds up. Will browse, play music, movies just as well as a newer system.

Joe Blogs doesn't need an i7 with 16GB RAM. Nor does he probably know what an i7 is. Mainstream PC's won't die out, but I don't think there will come a time where it'll be as booming as it was 10 years ago.

 

Iunno the PC gaming market probably hasn't shrunk, consider this.

There are around 500'000 people playing LoL, with 343'000 playing Dota2. There are still around 10 million subscribers to World of Warcraft, 500'000 current subscribers for eve online. 45 million active users for world of tanks. The slump they are probably talking about is within relation to traditionally distributed video-games with large publishers.

 

I wonder what percentage of the market is consumerdevices, and what percentage is corporate computing.
Tablet's will have made a big hit in the consumermarket.
But I don't see a lot of (big) companies going for tablets. Not for their Office/SAP/CAD junkies anyway.
If there's a decline in the corporate segment as well, that may well be to blame on Win8.
I suppose most companies haven't been on Win7/office 2010 for very long, and switching to Win8 now simply doesn't make sense.

 

The thing is, do corporates actually buy PCs any more? Most large organisations I've been involved with over the last few years have moved towards leasing their PCs with a three- or five-year replacement cycle - so does this get counted as a PC sale or not?

 

Surely PCs are reaching a bit of market saturation, as most people who will ever want one more than likely has one. For example, my gran would never dream of getting a pc, as theres no need for her to sit in front of a screen with kb+m when she can sit in her armchair with an ipad. Sure it'll be a long time before pcs die out but its hardly windows 8 fault that they aren't selling. If it was im sure that manufacturers would start to support linux a bit more.

 

Gaming pcs is a tiny market so even if the consoles are awesome its not going to encourage joe blogs to upgrade as they game on a console or tablet already.

 

haha anyway I lied, it was £379.99

 

Gaming pcs is a tiny market so even if the consoles are awesome its not going to encourage joe blogs to upgrade as they game on a console or tablet already.

Truth is for most people a 6 year old core 2 duo is more than enough, if they have added a ssd its still very quick on the day to day that it will be used for.

Facebook, Microsoft office music and video.

Pc my mam uses has a old AMD CPU in it that I give her. Last pc we brought from a shop was 14 years ago.

High end and enthusiast market for pcs is tiny in comparison to the total sales the likes of dell get.