5 ms·

FTA it's due to business PC growth, not casual PC growth

Joeri 8y ago
If that’s true basically the PC market for business has hit bottom. There’s very little traction for non-PC form factors as daily drivers in business, so there is a minimum market size just to keep every employee equipped with a laptop, and this seems to be it. The consumer market can still drop further though. Most people are fine using ipads, and probably even better off than with a laptop when all things are considered.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  I think you're conflating things. A decline in sales does not mean a decline in usage. Arguably the biggest reason that PC sales have declined is because a PC from 5+ years ago is now still 100% solid for everything outside of high end gaming and some esoteric tasks. And even in the case where somebody does want to engage in e.g. high end gaming, swapping out a video card is fine - and that's something that's not reflected in these reports which only count buying new preassembled machines from first party manufacturers. PC sales were at their peak when machines were outdated in 6 months and obsolete in 2 years. That era is completely dead. At this point there are likely literally billions of reasonably high performance machines out in the world. And I think also more people than ever have realized that 'building your own computer' is about as difficult as putting together a 10 piece lego toy, and you get exactly what you want, and you likely save a reasonable amount of money.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I was with you until your last sentence. Speaking as someone who built PCs for years. My impression is more along the lines is that you still often run into the same weird incompatibilities that you always did and that cause you to ask yourself "Seriously? What made you forget the two days you spent debugging that weird GPU driver interaction LAST time." As a result, the last time I decided I still needed a Windows box but both my old DIY systems were down for various counts, I just bought a 17" Alienware laptop which worked, reduced the clutter, and is just fine. (And I'm not sure it cost more than I'd have ended up spending.)
    - ghthor 8y ago
      No one is going to sell me a pre built machine running arch linux as the host, with Windows 10 in a virtual machine with a vfio passthrough GPU and usb controller so I can utilize VR hardware. Did it take me 2 days debugging USB controller and threadripper pcie bugs in the linux kernel, yep, but totally worth it once I strapped on my VR headset and it worked flawlessly. Also the peace of mind that Microsoft is isolated from most of the hardware in my machine.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  No... the Intel conveyor belt of improvement has been stagnant for 5 years. You actually have to be careful to not buy slower computers when you refresh these days. Now Windows 10 is driving an upgrade cycle by arbitrarily dropping support for old stuff and shipping every 6 months. Microsoft will continue to squeeze until people leave the platform.
  - Joeri 8y ago
    I disagree. A modern cpu from the same price class as five years ago is twice as fast. NVMe storage is also many times faster than SATA, and five years ago hdd’s were commonplace anyway. I’m not even going to discuss graphics. Windows 10’s hardware requirements are quite low: 1 ghz cpu, 2 gb ram, 20 gb hard drive. That’s 10 year old hardware. How much older do you expect them to support? Should it run on 20 year old hardware? To be fair 5 year old laptops might have driver compat issues on w10, but more likely the reason for the business uptick is just that pc’s only last so long before they need to be replaced, and for convenience of support they tend to replace in bulk.
    - zaat 8y ago
      Meet the silicone support policy: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2016/08/11/updates-to-silicon-support-policy-for-windows/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2016/08/1... Even 4 year old pc owners might find their systems to be partially supported: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-blocks-windows-10-creators-update-on-some-pcs/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-blocks-windows-10-cr...
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Windows 10 hardware requirements are a dark art. I know of a place that has an analyst type person spending about 50% of her time tracking the various dependencies between office, Windows and hardware.
- sdenton4 8y ago
  "Most people are fine using iPads..." Tablet sales have yanked though, and touch keyboards suck for writing anything longer than, say, this comment. (Actually, even this given the incidence of typos... Count them!) If your job involves wound emails, you probably need a laptop.
  - hrktb 8y ago
    what the OP meant by “consumer market” is home users I think. The intersting dynamic is that people tend to spend more time mastering their phones (for instance installing printing apps, dropbox etc.) and don’t want to maintain another completely different device they’ll only use occasionaly. This means people with old PCs won’t care much if it’s slow and clunky, as they won’t use it much. People without a PC yet might bail out completely and use their work computer when they have stuff that can only be done on PC. (note: total PC shipments are 61 million, business users included, while iPad sales for 2017 quarters were a about 11 million. People turning to the iPad for “big screen” tasks is a big enough trend I think)
    - rjbwork 8y ago
      Gamers and even some shops aren't buying "shipped computers". They're buying parts and slapping them together to make purpose build computers. My home PC has 2 GFX cards and a 6 core 5930K core (4ish years old now, first consumer level 6 core from intel), while my work PC has no GFX card, and a 6 core 8700K. I assembled both, and they work quite well at their tasks. I would never want to work with a pre-built computer again.

If that’s true basically the PC market for business has hit bottom. There’s very little traction for non-PC form factors as daily drivers in business, so there is a minimum market size just to keep every employee equipped with a laptop, and this seems to be it. The consumer market can still drop further though. Most people are fine using ipads, and probably even better off than with a laptop when all things are considered.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I think you're conflating things. A decline in sales does not mean a decline in usage. Arguably the biggest reason that PC sales have declined is because a PC from 5+ years ago is now still 100% solid for everything outside of high end gaming and some esoteric tasks. And even in the case where somebody does want to engage in e.g. high end gaming, swapping out a video card is fine - and that's something that's not reflected in these reports which only count buying new preassembled machines from first party manufacturers. PC sales were at their peak when machines were outdated in 6 months and obsolete in 2 years. That era is completely dead. At this point there are likely literally billions of reasonably high performance machines out in the world. And I think also more people than ever have realized that 'building your own computer' is about as difficult as putting together a 10 piece lego toy, and you get exactly what you want, and you likely save a reasonable amount of money.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I was with you until your last sentence. Speaking as someone who built PCs for years. My impression is more along the lines is that you still often run into the same weird incompatibilities that you always did and that cause you to ask yourself "Seriously? What made you forget the two days you spent debugging that weird GPU driver interaction LAST time." As a result, the last time I decided I still needed a Windows box but both my old DIY systems were down for various counts, I just bought a 17" Alienware laptop which worked, reduced the clutter, and is just fine. (And I'm not sure it cost more than I'd have ended up spending.)
  - ghthor 8y ago
    No one is going to sell me a pre built machine running arch linux as the host, with Windows 10 in a virtual machine with a vfio passthrough GPU and usb controller so I can utilize VR hardware. Did it take me 2 days debugging USB controller and threadripper pcie bugs in the linux kernel, yep, but totally worth it once I strapped on my VR headset and it worked flawlessly. Also the peace of mind that Microsoft is isolated from most of the hardware in my machine.
Spooky23 8y ago
No... the Intel conveyor belt of improvement has been stagnant for 5 years. You actually have to be careful to not buy slower computers when you refresh these days. Now Windows 10 is driving an upgrade cycle by arbitrarily dropping support for old stuff and shipping every 6 months. Microsoft will continue to squeeze until people leave the platform.
- Joeri 8y ago
  I disagree. A modern cpu from the same price class as five years ago is twice as fast. NVMe storage is also many times faster than SATA, and five years ago hdd’s were commonplace anyway. I’m not even going to discuss graphics. Windows 10’s hardware requirements are quite low: 1 ghz cpu, 2 gb ram, 20 gb hard drive. That’s 10 year old hardware. How much older do you expect them to support? Should it run on 20 year old hardware? To be fair 5 year old laptops might have driver compat issues on w10, but more likely the reason for the business uptick is just that pc’s only last so long before they need to be replaced, and for convenience of support they tend to replace in bulk.
  - zaat 8y ago
    Meet the silicone support policy: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2016/08/11/updates-to-silicon-support-policy-for-windows/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2016/08/1... Even 4 year old pc owners might find their systems to be partially supported: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-blocks-windows-10-creators-update-on-some-pcs/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-blocks-windows-10-cr...
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Windows 10 hardware requirements are a dark art. I know of a place that has an analyst type person spending about 50% of her time tracking the various dependencies between office, Windows and hardware.
sdenton4 8y ago
"Most people are fine using iPads..." Tablet sales have yanked though, and touch keyboards suck for writing anything longer than, say, this comment. (Actually, even this given the incidence of typos... Count them!) If your job involves wound emails, you probably need a laptop.
- hrktb 8y ago
  what the OP meant by “consumer market” is home users I think. The intersting dynamic is that people tend to spend more time mastering their phones (for instance installing printing apps, dropbox etc.) and don’t want to maintain another completely different device they’ll only use occasionaly. This means people with old PCs won’t care much if it’s slow and clunky, as they won’t use it much. People without a PC yet might bail out completely and use their work computer when they have stuff that can only be done on PC. (note: total PC shipments are 61 million, business users included, while iPad sales for 2017 quarters were a about 11 million. People turning to the iPad for “big screen” tasks is a big enough trend I think)
  - rjbwork 8y ago
    Gamers and even some shops aren't buying "shipped computers". They're buying parts and slapping them together to make purpose build computers. My home PC has 2 GFX cards and a 6 core 5930K core (4ish years old now, first consumer level 6 core from intel), while my work PC has no GFX card, and a 6 core 8700K. I assembled both, and they work quite well at their tasks. I would never want to work with a pre-built computer again.