10 ms·

Weak PC Market Catches Up to Microsoft

33 points by Toshio 13y ago

Yrlec 13y ago
The big question though is if sales are falling because people are switching to tablets/smartphones entirely or because they are buying tablets for a subset of their use cases. I'm a big PC fan and I would never replace my laptop with a tablet as my primary computing device. However, my next purchase will be a tablet, because I don't have one at the moment and it's great for surfing the web from the sofa. The marginal return of purchasing tablet is therefore higher. That doesn't mean my PC is going anywhere soon.
- dankoss 13y ago
  As tablet hardware and software becomes more capable, I would expect to see PC hardware sales drop. There may never be a perfect convergence where, for example, it's possible to develop tablet software on a tablet. But as the use cases increase particularly for content creation, less people need the capability of a full PC.
  - mwcampbell 13y ago
    I suggest keeping an eye on the Atom-based Windows 8 tablets. These tablets run full Windows 8, with the ability to run Win32 apps, not just Windows RT. I haven't tried to run Visual Studio on such a tablet yet, but it seems feasible.
- imissmyjuno 13y ago
  Another possibility is that older PCs are still good enough. My 4 year old Core 2 Duo MacBook with an SSD has felt speedy enough for all my day-to-day tasks (including driving a 24" display) that I just haven't bothered upgrading. How well do Windows 7 and 8 perform on older hardware?
  - rlu 13y ago
    A computer that came with XP (let's say prior to 2006? 2005?) will probably still run faster with XP (though XP is literally 12 years old now..). However, from what I understand a computer that came with Vista will run faster with Windows 7, and faster still with Windows 8. Vista upped system requirements from XP, but since then, MS has lowered system requirements and OS footprint on each release. Remember though that there are PCs that were genuinely quite good (back then) which came with XP and then could also easily run Vista. This is sort of what I was trying to get at with the 2005/2006 limit. Meaning that some PCs that came with XP might still be able to run faster with Win7/8. Just don't count on it if you got it in 2001 :)
bhauer 13y ago
Every time I read a report about the weak PC market, I am left stunned by the lack of innovation we've seen in desktop computing for the past ~10 years. I routinely reference my blog rants on the subject, and I'll do so again [1]. The desktop in 2013 needs to differentiate itself from portable devices--to stand out as providing something that simply cannot be achieved with a small screen. Desktops should be evolving toward immersion. The clearest path toward immersion is to make displays much larger and higher quality. Microsoft and all of the desktop PC hardware manufacturers should be investing heavily in larger form-factor, high-density displays. I believe that combining an immersive display format with the ongoing developments toward gesture and touch input would give desktop computing a necessary renaissance. These companies should feel ashamed that it took ~8 years to progress past the 30" 2560x1600 form factor to a $3,500 ASUS "4k" monitor. In 2013, a "4k" monitor on the desktop should be entry-level technology. After all, entry-level phones pull off still higher density. (Yes, I know that manufacturing a high-density large screen is expensive and that's the point; it's expensive because hardly any R&D is going into that channel and these companies have no idea how to stir up demand for something new and innovative on the desktop.) A 4k LCD monitor should be entry level. Had desktop displays progressed steadily rather than regressing (thanks to the taint of "HD") after the T220, an enthusiast desktop today should be ~8k OLED or better. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/displays-are-the-key http://tiamat.tsotech.com/displays-are-the-key
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  Why? I think they got desktop computing pretty much spot on. It's ubiquitous, cheap, reliable and good enough. People aren't buying stuff because they're pretty happy with what they've got. And 4k on the desktop? Fuck I really don't care if it's a 1280x800 or 1920x1080 display still.
  - dman 13y ago
    Technical progress depends on getting people to be unhappy with what they have because theres something new that is genuinely better.
    - 13y ago
mariusmg 13y ago
It's called market saturation. Most people don't need hardware upgrades for facebook and shitty flash games.
- dspillett 13y ago
  If developers were pushing the current CPU and GPU capabilities on PCs there would be more demand for upgrades, but instead most games target the current console standards and offer little else extra if they find more power available. I suspect there will be a blip over the next 18-to-24 months as the next generation of consoles become common and developers start targeting them rather than the last generation, so what is not "bog standard" on the desktop will not be good enough, then it'll settle again once the people that care for high spec games on the PC have upgraded.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    The most common use for PC's is Microsoft Office, web browsing, and email. None of those should be 'pushing the current CPU and GPU capabilities.' Most people aren't gamers or enthusiasts, those groups don't drive the market anymore. Lets also keep in mind that most publishers would like to sell games to more then the 4 (size artificially small for emphasis) people who buy the latest graphics card every 6 months. That means targeting hardware on a 1-2 year lag at least. Hard core gamers, while a market that spends money, is very small. Targeting the most powerful doesn't make sense.
  - mwcampbell 13y ago
    > If developers were pushing the current CPU and GPU capabilities on PCs And why should developers do so? If Drew Crawford's blog post "Mobile web apps are slow" and its more famous follow-up taught me anything, it's that we developers are already ridiculously spoiled with our current desktops and laptops. On laptops, we satisfy our infinite appetite for performance by "plugging it in, strapping a 2-lb battery to it, and throwing in a few fans" (to quote a comment on the first blog post mentioned above); for a desktop, we plug it in, use a large 20+ pound case, and throw in more fans. I can't help but wonder if these computers will someday be near-universally regarded as monstrosities akin to gas-guzzling SUVs. I think it's time more of us developers (myself included) learned to work within real constraints again, by using devices that are designed to be fanless and battery-powered, e.g. modern phones and tablets, for more of our day-to-day activities and software testing.
cognivore 13y ago
If you’re a technical person who uses computers for your work, a weak PC market is a blessing. There is absolutely no reason the general public should be using the traditional desktop computer. They should be using limited use devices tailored to the things that people want to do the most – prattle, get directions, browse the web, and buy stuff. They can use their smart phone or tablet for these. Such devices fit the technical commitment level of the general public, not demanding much in the way of learning or expertise. Computers should be for computer people who are willing to make the investment that they require to use properly and effectively. The general public has consistently shown they do not have this capability, and only serve as drag on those technical. As we move forward and the majority of the population is on phones and tablets those who have made the investment to use computers well will have a decided advantage in our increasingly technological world.
- purplelobster 13y ago
  Interesting point of view. I wonder if the people growing up on smart-phones and tablets today will be unable to use productivity devices in the future, or whether tablets will become the new productivity device. My guess is that at some point in school, most students will need word processing and various other productivity tools, and will become acquainted with them that way.
- chmodd 13y ago
  I had a similar thought recently. People who are currently in their 20s and 30s had a unique privilege of growing up when fully-featured computers appeared in almost every household. A bored 13 year old kid getting a Pentium-166 desktop for Christmas is much more likely to start tinkering with the system, learn to program, hack, etc. than if his or her first computer was a walled garden iPad. Now with the huge success of smartphones and tablets, it may well happen that most households of 2025 won't even have a computer suitable for anything but media consumption and "apps".
themstheones 13y ago
MS should just calve off it's different divisions. Seems like they are getting dragged down by forays into markets they aren't good in, e.g. tablets.
- pawrvx 13y ago
  Firing Ballmer would be the first step.
- VintageCool 13y ago
  That's not necessary. Microsoft's net income this quarter was $4.97 billion. They're doing great. They failed to meet Wall Street's expectations this quarter, but that doesn't mean they're getting dragged down. Additionally, the first few revisions of any new Microsoft product tend to do poorly, but Microsoft has huge stockpiles of cash that they can throw at the problem until they break into a market, dominate it, and start producing positive revenue.
th0ma5 13y ago
My Dell Mini 9 still has some killer features that I can't seem to find on the market: 1. < $300 2. No fan 3. SDD 4. GPU 5. x86 Because of the need to support Windows a lot of netbooks are missing the SSD and add the fan. A lot of the Chromebooks are Atom. The one Samsung one maybe fits this bill, but I think it is on its way out. I had hope for Haswell, but turns out it may break #1. Anyway, I guess I need to start thinking about Atom and what kinds of OpenGL ES kinds of things maybe, and forget about OpenCL or some such, which is probably appropriate anyway. The point of how awesome the machine is that it is small, quiet, and an amazing terminal into the various clusters I utilize. Thanks Microsoft, for killing them off.
- astrodust 13y ago
  It's arguably point #1 that's killing the PC market. $300 isn't much money to work with, and there's a huge difference between a $500 computer and a $300 one. At the lower price-point, you're getting bargain-bin everything, every corner cut.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
The desktop/PC market has lost all innovation. I'm not sure why. Things that we take for granted in other form factors: touchscreens, built-in battery backups, seamless bluetooth integration, voice commands -- should be standard by now in desktops. Once they assimilate what's great from other form factors, they can leverage the space on the desk to do things the other ones can't. Things like 3-D, very-large screen formats, wall displays, and gesture recognition. Instead, somehow the desktop crowd started chasing gamers, creating faster and faster video cards and overclocked processors on the high-end. That was a nice crutch for a few years, but it's not a growth strategy. For the desktop/household PC to grow, it needs to develop into something that it's currently not: an immersive computing experience that's part of your household. That might even include starting to team off with builders to make the PC part of the normal decorative process of designing houses. There's no reason some kind of swappable PC with a wall display couldn't be part of household room designs. The form factor is dead because the industry has lost the ability to execute on a vision. Instead they're just trying to see how long they can milk the cash cow. Looks like we're now beginning to see an answer to that question.
mwfunk 13y ago
I've long thought that it may have actually been better for Microsoft in the long run if the antitrust trial had resulted in breaking them up. Who knows though. The constant forays into new markets isn't new- they've been doing that since the mid-90s at least. At that time they had essentially "won" the PC market and achieved 90%+ market share with Windows and Office. Those products grew and grew until they had nowhere to go. You'd think that would be great for them (and it has been), but stock prices for the tech industry are driven by growth, not profits. If you aren't constantly growing and expanding, your stock price will flatline or start declining. So, for the last 15-20 years Microsoft has been taking the profits from their cash cows and throwing them into one attempt at expansion after another- MSN, Web TV, Zune, Xbox (which was ultimately successful, but not especially profitable)...on and on. Hardly any of their expansion attempts worked out for various reasons. Often their products were clones of some other company's already successful product, and coming out with something just as good (or even a little better) a year or two later is just not good enough to unseat a firmly established competitor. They also push the Microsoft and Windows branding hard, on everything they make, but those are just not brands that most consumers have positive associations with. That's the fate of many tech companies, and it's kind of depressing: they have huge success with some core products, blow up over a short period of time, and effectively achieve monopolies with those products. The core products become cash cows, reliably raking in tons of money quarter after quarter, but they have nowhere left to go. So the company dedicates itself to throwing that cash cow money at one (usually) failed attempt at expansion to new markets after another, but hardly anything takes hold and they are punished by the stock market and their shareholders, despite the fact that they are still insanely profitable. In the worst case, some sea change in the industry comes along after a decade or two, and all of a sudden their dependable cash cow starts drying up. It happened with IBM, it's been happening with Microsoft, and it'll probably happen to many of the top tech companies right now. It sucks and it's stupid, but that's the nature of the tech industry; being publicly traded is a double-edged sword because if you're not constantly growing and expanding, your shareholders think you are failing. I wish more companies could settle into a state of doing one thing really well and not have constant pressure to expand, because that's ultimately what kills them.

33 points by Toshio 13y ago

Yrlec 13y ago

The big question though is if sales are falling because people are switching to tablets/smartphones entirely or because they are buying tablets for a subset of their use cases. I'm a big PC fan and I would never replace my laptop with a tablet as my primary computing device. However, my next purchase will be a tablet, because I don't have one at the moment and it's great for surfing the web from the sofa. The marginal return of purchasing tablet is therefore higher. That doesn't mean my PC is going anywhere soon.

dankoss 13y ago
As tablet hardware and software becomes more capable, I would expect to see PC hardware sales drop. There may never be a perfect convergence where, for example, it's possible to develop tablet software on a tablet. But as the use cases increase particularly for content creation, less people need the capability of a full PC.
- mwcampbell 13y ago
  I suggest keeping an eye on the Atom-based Windows 8 tablets. These tablets run full Windows 8, with the ability to run Win32 apps, not just Windows RT. I haven't tried to run Visual Studio on such a tablet yet, but it seems feasible.
imissmyjuno 13y ago
Another possibility is that older PCs are still good enough. My 4 year old Core 2 Duo MacBook with an SSD has felt speedy enough for all my day-to-day tasks (including driving a 24" display) that I just haven't bothered upgrading. How well do Windows 7 and 8 perform on older hardware?
- rlu 13y ago
  A computer that came with XP (let's say prior to 2006? 2005?) will probably still run faster with XP (though XP is literally 12 years old now..). However, from what I understand a computer that came with Vista will run faster with Windows 7, and faster still with Windows 8. Vista upped system requirements from XP, but since then, MS has lowered system requirements and OS footprint on each release. Remember though that there are PCs that were genuinely quite good (back then) which came with XP and then could also easily run Vista. This is sort of what I was trying to get at with the 2005/2006 limit. Meaning that some PCs that came with XP might still be able to run faster with Win7/8. Just don't count on it if you got it in 2001 :)

bhauer 13y ago

Every time I read a report about the weak PC market, I am left stunned by the lack of innovation we've seen in desktop computing for the past ~10 years. I routinely reference my blog rants on the subject, and I'll do so again [1]. The desktop in 2013 needs to differentiate itself from portable devices--to stand out as providing something that simply cannot be achieved with a small screen. Desktops should be evolving toward immersion. The clearest path toward immersion is to make displays much larger and higher quality. Microsoft and all of the desktop PC hardware manufacturers should be investing heavily in larger form-factor, high-density displays. I believe that combining an immersive display format with the ongoing developments toward gesture and touch input would give desktop computing a necessary renaissance. These companies should feel ashamed that it took ~8 years to progress past the 30" 2560x1600 form factor to a $3,500 ASUS "4k" monitor. In 2013, a "4k" monitor on the desktop should be entry-level technology. After all, entry-level phones pull off still higher density. (Yes, I know that manufacturing a high-density large screen is expensive and that's the point; it's expensive because hardly any R&D is going into that channel and these companies have no idea how to stir up demand for something new and innovative on the desktop.) A 4k LCD monitor should be entry level. Had desktop displays progressed steadily rather than regressing (thanks to the taint of "HD") after the T220, an enthusiast desktop today should be ~8k OLED or better. [1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/displays-are-the-key http://tiamat.tsotech.com/displays-are-the-key

harrytuttle 13y ago
Why? I think they got desktop computing pretty much spot on. It's ubiquitous, cheap, reliable and good enough. People aren't buying stuff because they're pretty happy with what they've got. And 4k on the desktop? Fuck I really don't care if it's a 1280x800 or 1920x1080 display still.
- dman 13y ago
  Technical progress depends on getting people to be unhappy with what they have because theres something new that is genuinely better.
  - 13y ago

mariusmg 13y ago

It's called market saturation. Most people don't need hardware upgrades for facebook and shitty flash games.

dspillett 13y ago
If developers were pushing the current CPU and GPU capabilities on PCs there would be more demand for upgrades, but instead most games target the current console standards and offer little else extra if they find more power available. I suspect there will be a blip over the next 18-to-24 months as the next generation of consoles become common and developers start targeting them rather than the last generation, so what is not "bog standard" on the desktop will not be good enough, then it'll settle again once the people that care for high spec games on the PC have upgraded.
- mhurron 13y ago
  The most common use for PC's is Microsoft Office, web browsing, and email. None of those should be 'pushing the current CPU and GPU capabilities.' Most people aren't gamers or enthusiasts, those groups don't drive the market anymore. Lets also keep in mind that most publishers would like to sell games to more then the 4 (size artificially small for emphasis) people who buy the latest graphics card every 6 months. That means targeting hardware on a 1-2 year lag at least. Hard core gamers, while a market that spends money, is very small. Targeting the most powerful doesn't make sense.
- mwcampbell 13y ago
  > If developers were pushing the current CPU and GPU capabilities on PCs And why should developers do so? If Drew Crawford's blog post "Mobile web apps are slow" and its more famous follow-up taught me anything, it's that we developers are already ridiculously spoiled with our current desktops and laptops. On laptops, we satisfy our infinite appetite for performance by "plugging it in, strapping a 2-lb battery to it, and throwing in a few fans" (to quote a comment on the first blog post mentioned above); for a desktop, we plug it in, use a large 20+ pound case, and throw in more fans. I can't help but wonder if these computers will someday be near-universally regarded as monstrosities akin to gas-guzzling SUVs. I think it's time more of us developers (myself included) learned to work within real constraints again, by using devices that are designed to be fanless and battery-powered, e.g. modern phones and tablets, for more of our day-to-day activities and software testing.

cognivore 13y ago

If you’re a technical person who uses computers for your work, a weak PC market is a blessing. There is absolutely no reason the general public should be using the traditional desktop computer. They should be using limited use devices tailored to the things that people want to do the most – prattle, get directions, browse the web, and buy stuff. They can use their smart phone or tablet for these. Such devices fit the technical commitment level of the general public, not demanding much in the way of learning or expertise. Computers should be for computer people who are willing to make the investment that they require to use properly and effectively. The general public has consistently shown they do not have this capability, and only serve as drag on those technical. As we move forward and the majority of the population is on phones and tablets those who have made the investment to use computers well will have a decided advantage in our increasingly technological world.

purplelobster 13y ago
Interesting point of view. I wonder if the people growing up on smart-phones and tablets today will be unable to use productivity devices in the future, or whether tablets will become the new productivity device. My guess is that at some point in school, most students will need word processing and various other productivity tools, and will become acquainted with them that way.
chmodd 13y ago
I had a similar thought recently. People who are currently in their 20s and 30s had a unique privilege of growing up when fully-featured computers appeared in almost every household. A bored 13 year old kid getting a Pentium-166 desktop for Christmas is much more likely to start tinkering with the system, learn to program, hack, etc. than if his or her first computer was a walled garden iPad. Now with the huge success of smartphones and tablets, it may well happen that most households of 2025 won't even have a computer suitable for anything but media consumption and "apps".

themstheones 13y ago

MS should just calve off it's different divisions. Seems like they are getting dragged down by forays into markets they aren't good in, e.g. tablets.

pawrvx 13y ago
Firing Ballmer would be the first step.
VintageCool 13y ago
That's not necessary. Microsoft's net income this quarter was $4.97 billion. They're doing great. They failed to meet Wall Street's expectations this quarter, but that doesn't mean they're getting dragged down. Additionally, the first few revisions of any new Microsoft product tend to do poorly, but Microsoft has huge stockpiles of cash that they can throw at the problem until they break into a market, dominate it, and start producing positive revenue.

th0ma5 13y ago

My Dell Mini 9 still has some killer features that I can't seem to find on the market: 1. < $300 2. No fan 3. SDD 4. GPU 5. x86 Because of the need to support Windows a lot of netbooks are missing the SSD and add the fan. A lot of the Chromebooks are Atom. The one Samsung one maybe fits this bill, but I think it is on its way out. I had hope for Haswell, but turns out it may break #1. Anyway, I guess I need to start thinking about Atom and what kinds of OpenGL ES kinds of things maybe, and forget about OpenCL or some such, which is probably appropriate anyway. The point of how awesome the machine is that it is small, quiet, and an amazing terminal into the various clusters I utilize. Thanks Microsoft, for killing them off.

astrodust 13y ago
It's arguably point #1 that's killing the PC market. $300 isn't much money to work with, and there's a huge difference between a $500 computer and a $300 one. At the lower price-point, you're getting bargain-bin everything, every corner cut.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

The desktop/PC market has lost all innovation. I'm not sure why. Things that we take for granted in other form factors: touchscreens, built-in battery backups, seamless bluetooth integration, voice commands -- should be standard by now in desktops. Once they assimilate what's great from other form factors, they can leverage the space on the desk to do things the other ones can't. Things like 3-D, very-large screen formats, wall displays, and gesture recognition. Instead, somehow the desktop crowd started chasing gamers, creating faster and faster video cards and overclocked processors on the high-end. That was a nice crutch for a few years, but it's not a growth strategy. For the desktop/household PC to grow, it needs to develop into something that it's currently not: an immersive computing experience that's part of your household. That might even include starting to team off with builders to make the PC part of the normal decorative process of designing houses. There's no reason some kind of swappable PC with a wall display couldn't be part of household room designs. The form factor is dead because the industry has lost the ability to execute on a vision. Instead they're just trying to see how long they can milk the cash cow. Looks like we're now beginning to see an answer to that question.

mwfunk 13y ago

I've long thought that it may have actually been better for Microsoft in the long run if the antitrust trial had resulted in breaking them up. Who knows though. The constant forays into new markets isn't new- they've been doing that since the mid-90s at least. At that time they had essentially "won" the PC market and achieved 90%+ market share with Windows and Office. Those products grew and grew until they had nowhere to go. You'd think that would be great for them (and it has been), but stock prices for the tech industry are driven by growth, not profits. If you aren't constantly growing and expanding, your stock price will flatline or start declining. So, for the last 15-20 years Microsoft has been taking the profits from their cash cows and throwing them into one attempt at expansion after another- MSN, Web TV, Zune, Xbox (which was ultimately successful, but not especially profitable)...on and on. Hardly any of their expansion attempts worked out for various reasons. Often their products were clones of some other company's already successful product, and coming out with something just as good (or even a little better) a year or two later is just not good enough to unseat a firmly established competitor. They also push the Microsoft and Windows branding hard, on everything they make, but those are just not brands that most consumers have positive associations with. That's the fate of many tech companies, and it's kind of depressing: they have huge success with some core products, blow up over a short period of time, and effectively achieve monopolies with those products. The core products become cash cows, reliably raking in tons of money quarter after quarter, but they have nowhere left to go. So the company dedicates itself to throwing that cash cow money at one (usually) failed attempt at expansion to new markets after another, but hardly anything takes hold and they are punished by the stock market and their shareholders, despite the fact that they are still insanely profitable. In the worst case, some sea change in the industry comes along after a decade or two, and all of a sudden their dependable cash cow starts drying up. It happened with IBM, it's been happening with Microsoft, and it'll probably happen to many of the top tech companies right now. It sucks and it's stupid, but that's the nature of the tech industry; being publicly traded is a double-edged sword because if you're not constantly growing and expanding, your shareholders think you are failing. I wish more companies could settle into a state of doing one thing really well and not have constant pressure to expand, because that's ultimately what kills them.