The good news: PC sales went up a little worldwide, say Gartner crystal-ball-gazers

It's time for the quarterly PC market predictions from analyst houses Gartner and IDC and, as usual, they disagree on the state of the trade. Gartner reports global PC sales of 67.2 million units for Q3 2018 showed a slim growth of 0.1 per cent over the same period in 2017. Meanwhile IDC said volumes of 67.4 million units is …

[steviebuk]

Gartner....

...who've been giving praise to Equifax for years.

So I don't trust anything Gartner says.

[bombastic bob]

if it weren't for Win-10-nic

PC sales would be fine, if they were pre-installed with WINDOWS 7 instead of Win-10-nic (or 'Ape' for what it's worth). Micro-shaft has *killed* desktop sales by making sure that the next machine you buy won't be perceived as 'as good as or better than what you already have'.

Results are, therefore, obvious, as well as the *CAUSE*.

Perhaps vendors need to get on board with the idea of shipping more computers with a DIFFERENT operating system, and promote it a bit, so that their sales will increase? You know, something like Mint or Ubuntu or one of the other more popular Linux distros... [with a choice of what you want pre-loaded!].

It wouldn't take a whole lot of convincing, especially if Linux were available on *ALL* computer models [not just 'select' ones], for people to choose Linux over Win-10-nic, especially if it were presented correctly and advertised a bit. This goes DOUBLE for computers sold without "the Micro-shaft tax" (i.e. a Win-10-nic license fee).

Imagine a Dell or Lenovo ad showing their computer with Linux Mint on it, doing something with Libre Office, web surfing via Firefox, and so forth, as a viable alternative to Microsoft, without the slurp, ads, update problems, etc. - and more CHOICE for configuring the desktop!

I know it would work. But the Micro-shaft lobbying against this has been strong...

[Timmy B]

Re: if it weren't for Win-10-nic

Your logic doesn't work BOB. If your theory about people not buying PCs because they don't have windows 7 on them is correct we would see sales decreasing as fewer 7 PCs are available. What we are seeing is the sales slowly increasing.

I think this has more to do with tablets. It seemed a few years back that every other bit of IT kit was some kind of tablet, with even supermarkets selling their own branded ones and people building them into printers!. People rushed out and bought loads of these and now phones are taking their place. But people want something bigger to do a bit more on - they are realising that a phone is just too small. They are buying laptops instead. I can see the two devices that people own in the future will be laptop and phone.

[Timmy B]

Re: if it weren't for Win-10-nic

"Imagine a Dell or Lenovo ad showing their computer with Linux Mint on it, doing something with Libre Office, web surfing via Firefox, and so forth, as a viable alternative to Microsoft, without the slurp, ads, update problems, etc. - and more CHOICE for configuring the desktop!"

Then see them tearing their hair out as the average user tries to get wifi and printing work on Linux! Your average user would gladly swap ease for "slurp" as they simply don't care.