6 ms·
PC sales (laptop and desktop) in general have been on the decline since 2010 or so and the margins in that market for players who aren't Apple are generally so
by georgemcbay 12y ago
PC sales (laptop and desktop) in general have been on the decline since 2010 or so and the margins in that market for players who aren't Apple are generally so low that the declines don't have to be that bad to really put a squeeze on manufacturers.
The iPad/Tablet market gets almost all the credit for this decline in the media but while I'm sure that's part of it I personally think the fact that we hit a point around 2010 where desktops and laptops were just plain good enough (truly good enough, not 640k good enough) for almost everything people normally do was as much or more of a factor than tablets. Short of having a machine die on you there are precious few reasons to run out and buy a new system anymore.
I'm a software developer, a hobby photographer who shoots in RAW and a gamer and even I haven't bought a new desktop or laptop in 4 years (and I used to be someone who would build an entirely new desktop system yearly with major upgrades 6 months in to boost it up).
- rurounijones 12y agoAgreed, the last great upgrade was the SSD. After that, for people using their laptops as non-intensive consumer devices, what else do they need?
- chx 12y agoIndeed. If you have a late 2008 all Intel laptop with a Penryn CPU and an X25-M SSD (fiendishly expensive at that time) to this day, six years later, it's hard to see what's the point of getting another laptop. For a few more years, the decreasing costs of SSDs were giving incentive but yes, once you have that, what incentive remains? The high resolution screen is still more trouble than advantage. I was purchasing newer and newer ThinkPads for a few more years, until I could put 16GB (for a sw developer, having lots of RAM is helpful) in a 14" model, then stopped at the T420 in 2011 and that's the end of laptops for me for the foreseeable future.
- Alphasite_ 12y agoThe substantial improvements in battery? Better screens (brighter, better fov, more resolution 2008 laptops had atrocious screens)? More portable designs? USB3? Better trackpads and keyboards? More durable designs?
- 72deluxe 12y agoI second the battery and screen improvements. And perhaps increased CPU performance because I like short compile times please.
- wfjackson 12y agoLenovo is doing good and getting better. http://www.cnet.com/news/lenovo-earnings-soar-on-solid-pc-smartphone-sales/ http://www.cnet.com/news/lenovo-earnings-soar-on-solid-pc-sm...
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoLenovo sells more than just consumer PCs.