Re: Desktops and laptops have their niche
"I think what's happening is that desktop and laptop vendors are going upmarket."
They've been trying for years - outside of Apple they haven't had a lot of success and Apple see their year-on-year sales consolidating around certain models in each range.
The problem for manufacturers isn't so much the volume (as it drops it drives consolidation as the market is still pretty big at around 250+ million units/year), its that there is no real innovation driving a need for new PC's.
CPU's have plateaued in-terms of single core performance and the mainstream desktop software market hasn't really found anything to capitalise on multicore to drive sales.
While SSD provides benefits, it has to get down to the US$35 or less/unit cost to compete with HDD - laptops and enterprise storage are driving the price drops so it will happen eventually.
Combined with tablets/mobiles/games consoles the edges of the market will continue to shrink, probably at the low end of the market. So maybe Gartner will be right this time and average prices will increase...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
