Global PC market's not dead, it's just resting – Gartner The PC market never really died, it was just resting – at least according to our man at Gartner, who leaned on the latest global sales data to prove there’s some life left yet in the form factor. According to preliminary stats, sales into channels grew one per cent in Q4 to 83.7 million boxes as retailers and disties took …
I eagerly await the day that we will hear of the triumphant return of the PC based on soaring sales - only to find out that all those sales are in China and India and the "First World" market is as stagnant as a frog pond.
I wonder how they will spin that as good news ?
Like most of the people I know, why on earth would you bother to buy a new pc until your current one breaks - The difference in speed is so pointless compared to my four year old one what exactly is the point..? At work my three year old laptop would boot a little faster but otherwise again why would I bother and why would the business bother with little gain for more expenditure..
since they traditionally assemble their own rigs. There's quite a few of them - at least 700,000 have backed Star Citizen, which will definitely require a high end PC, and that represents only a fairly niche segment of the PC gamer market.
As for the less demanding PC gamers (ones more likely to buy off the shelf), Steam has 75 million active accounts (logged on in the last month), and the release of the PS4 and XBox One has resulted in the release of PC ports of AAA games that are considerably more hardware demanding.
This may well result in a significant portion of that 75 million deciding to upgrade their PCs.
It's not a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but could make a measurable difference.
I've said it on a number of occasions. It really gets my goat (poor thing hasn't had a moment to itself lately) that so many people insist that the PC is in decline. There's a lot of reasons why people are not buying new PCs right now yet few seem to take any notice. Even this Gartner person isn't considering all angles, or perhaps he is but the reporter isn't interested in reporting them.
Tablet infiltration into the market is only one part of the whole situation. Corporates are being scared off even now because of the whole Windows 8 fiasco, not to mention that some are still rolling out W7 despite today's coming of age of that system (i.e. moving to "extended coverage" which usually means "we'll fix it if we can be bothered or if it is likely to make us look bad"). Generally people are getting a bit sick of changing their hardware every few years because it won't run what they need anymore. It's exactly how it was back when Vista came out and yet Microsoft and the various hardware players still ignore this.
And so, if this report is complete and unabridged, do Gartner.
No bugger wants W8. They'd rather put up with XP's death rattle.
Tablets cover the casual users quiet nicely.
Gaming has moved on to "added-value" in game sales, which has killed off a lot of interest in people wanting new hardware to play the latest & greatest AAA.
A slow economy will also take its bite.
Basically, there's no choice in the PC market and it's dieing because of it.
I don't need any fancy analysis to tell me what's wrong with the PC market. It's obvious: PCs got 'good enough.'
Anyone here should remember the 90s and much of the 00s - you couldn't get a PC home from the store before it was obsolete, things moved so fast. If you wanted to keep up to date with the current software you'd be buying a new PC every year or two. Three at most, by which time it felt like it was powered by steam. There was plenty of fresh demand too as families got their first home PC.
Now? You can use a ten-year-old laptop quite happily. It might not do for the latest games, but aside from that it's up to everything a typical user might ask. Everyone who wants a PC has one. I'm surprised manufacturers aren't fighting harder over emerging markets, because that's the only growth area left.
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