4 ms·

Apparently not a whole lot since given the data they show, desktop computing was hit hard. I admit this came as a surprise to me. I had assumed, from a combin

by bhauer 6y ago

Apparently not a whole lot since given the data they show, desktop computing was hit hard. I admit this came as a surprise to me. I had assumed, from a combination of the title and my intuition about 2020, that desktop computing would be enjoying a resurgence. My thinking: many of us are stuck at home and desktop computing is the premium computing experience—especially for enthusiasts, gamers, content creators, engineers, programmers, etc. We're no longer carrying a computer to and from an office each day, so the value of a laptop is diminished. In fact, when my laptop died in April, I didn't replace it for several months because my home workstation is what I'm using every day and I wasn't traveling anywhere. I suppose enthusiasts don't really count for a big enough market to lift the numbers. Still I would have expected 2020 to be flat on desktop computers, not dramatically down.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
I'm guessing that a big chunk of the desktop market was in corporates and they have been switching to laptops while people work from home. That was certainly the case in my wife's office.
- bhauer 6y ago
  That's a good point. And that must have been large enough to easily more than offset any increase in demand from the home desktop computing enthusiast. For my company, since we didn't want to use a bunch of money to buy new equipment during an economic squeeze, we let the programmers (essentially everyone) take their workstations home, and most did.
- kube-system 6y ago
  That has been the steady trend for a while. Desktops in offices have been slowly dwindling down to two categories: * Creatives who need more horsepower than a mobile workstation can provide * Hourly employees with minimal computing needs who won't use their computer outside of their cubical Anyone in the middle is better served by a laptop
volkl48 6y ago
I'll point out that this appears to be measuring sales from OEMs. I don't think it's capturing anything about people who build their own system, so whether or not that market has grown probably isn't reflected in this.

by bhauer 6y ago

tonyedgecombe 6y ago

I'm guessing that a big chunk of the desktop market was in corporates and they have been switching to laptops while people work from home. That was certainly the case in my wife's office.

bhauer 6y ago
That's a good point. And that must have been large enough to easily more than offset any increase in demand from the home desktop computing enthusiast. For my company, since we didn't want to use a bunch of money to buy new equipment during an economic squeeze, we let the programmers (essentially everyone) take their workstations home, and most did.
kube-system 6y ago
That has been the steady trend for a while. Desktops in offices have been slowly dwindling down to two categories: * Creatives who need more horsepower than a mobile workstation can provide * Hourly employees with minimal computing needs who won't use their computer outside of their cubical Anyone in the middle is better served by a laptop

volkl48 6y ago

I'll point out that this appears to be measuring sales from OEMs. I don't think it's capturing anything about people who build their own system, so whether or not that market has grown probably isn't reflected in this.