Now even China's PC market is shrinking

Just when you thought the outlook for the PC industry couldn’t get any more gloomy, shipments in APAC declined in the last quarter by 2.6 per cent from the previous year. Even China stopped buying PCs, posting its first ever year-on-year loss of 5.4 per cent, according to Gartner. The analyst’s latest report for Q2 can be read …

[Khaptain]

One very bright analyst

"Gartner principal analyst, Eileen He, told The Reg that not even the next wave of Ultrabooks or the launch of Windows 8 is likely to dispel the short term gloom in the region, with macro-economic factors having the biggest impact on buying habits going forward."

I sincerely hope that she doesn't get paid for stating the bleeding obvious. Statements like these merit a severe slap around the ears. And this was from their "senior analyst" makes you shudder about what the juniors are capable of.

[Big-nosed Pengie]

WTF is an "ultrabook"

other than an advertising slogan?

[Euripides Pants]

Re: WTF is an "ultrabook"

A pop-up storybook about Ultraman, maybe?

[kb]

Re: WTF is an "ultrabook"

A way for Intel to try to push up the price of laptops since the race to the bottom has cut out a large portion of their chips? I hate to break the news to them but the few shops I've seen carrying them say they just aren't moving, the price is simply too high. Whether Intel likes it or not the sweet spot for laptop sales is between $400-$650 which means most of the i5s and i7 are priced right out of the market while on the other hand I'm seeing a lot of those AMD quad lappys as of late.

As for why sales are down worldwide? Duh its a worldwide recession! Thankfully there hasn't been a "killer app" for PCs since they hit the thermal wall and the MHz wars ended so most in the west can stick with their Core Duos and Phenom I X3s and X4s while in China if you can only afford a single device those iPhone knockoffs are cheap and let you carry the net with you.

But you can expect PC sales to remain flatline, but its not tablets and phones that is the problem, its a dead worldwide economy.

[pPPPP]

Most people who need a PC already have one. Most people who need a laptop already have one.

People only buy new if they believe theirs has slowed down due to it getting old (in reality installing too much crap), if they're convinced that the latest, shiniest, most expensive laptop is a must have item, or they're suckered in by bloated new operating systems. And a lot of those people are the same folk who would buy a tablet because they think it'll solve all their problems.

My mother was recently convinced that she needed a new laptop, and as a pensioner she was becoming increasingly worried about it. The laptop in question had Vista, Norton bloatware (for which they'd frightened her into paying a subscription - I got that back) and surprisingly few toolbars and was running on 512 MB of RAM.

You're all techies. You don't need me to tell you the rest.

I own many PCs. Most of them sit in the loft doing not a lot. They're not worth much but I refuse to throw them out. Along with an ST and Amiga and a Spectrum.

[Garibaldi]

Fanboi calm down

I know it's scary feeling that your osx hackintosh box can die any day, and realizing the pc era is fading like Commodore. If you guys take a shower once a week, and clean up your room I am sure ur mommy would give u enough money to buy an iPad, and a brand new toy that any unemployed 30 year old fanboi, living in momma’s basement with no woman, no savings, and no friends need.

[mhenriday]

A modest proposal - rather than an article reproducing Gartner's latest PR release,

couldn't the Reg vouchsafe us a detailed article which examines Gartner's IT predictions over, say, the last five years and tells us just how they panned out ?...

Henri