PC sales see 'longest decline' in history

[Mulreay]

Global personal computer (PC) sales have fallen for the fifth quarter in a row, making it the "longest duration of decline" in history.

Worldwide PC shipments totalled 76 million units in the second quarter, a 10.9% drop from a year earlier, according to research firm Gartner.

PC sales have been hurt in recent years by the growing popularity of tablets.

Gartner said the introduction of low-cost tablets had further hurt PC sales, especially in emerging economies.

"In emerging markets, inexpensive tablets have become the first computing device for many people, who at best are deferring the purchase of a PC," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.

Full story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23251285

[Geek-9pm]

Is it ten per cent global?
I am reading about 14% in some places.

[BC_Programmer]

It's almost as if the slowdown in real improvements to the underlying technology has translated into people realizing they don't need the latest and greatest PC. Usually you can even get by on a 10 year old PC (2003) nowadays, whereas you couldn't have gotten along most of the time with a 10 year old PC from 1993 in 2003.

[Calum]

It's almost as if the slowdown in real improvements to the underlying technology has translated into people realizing they don't need the latest and greatest PC. Usually you can even get by on a 10 year old PC (2003) nowadays, whereas you couldn't have gotten along most of the time with a 10 year old PC from 1993 in 2003.

This.  Also, I think the market for new PCs, as in for completely new users, is approaching saturation point in some markets, like the US and the UK.  That's not to say that everyone has a PC, more that everyone who wants one, has one, or has bought a tablet or other fad device instead.  Most PC sales are replacement machines, for either broken or outdated machines, but as BC says, computers today tend to last longer and be more reliable.  Also, I've seen a trend towards people wanting to stick with their older machines and just upgrade - again, a few years ago it wasn't so feasible, but nowadays as long as you have a SATA port (so anything from roughly 2005 onwards) just slap an SSD in there, reinstall Windows, ans you're good to go, that's all the speed you could ask for in a general purpose PC.  Standards also haven't moved on that much, a PCI-E card from 2013 will work in a PC from 2005 with a PCI-E slot.  A machine from 2003 with an AGP slot has no hope of tackling any recent games, so again the upgrade options are there because things essentially haven't changed that much in the last 7-8 years.

[BC_Programmer]

Originally there were technical reasons for upgrades. Eg. in the 80's, computers changes so frequently that the advantages of a new machine over an old were pretty big.

Over time those technical reasons went away, and left behind only marketing reasons and companies injecting a social stigma of "old machines" to convince people to buy new ones.

And now, people are realizing more and more that they don't need a new PC and for what they use it for, they cannot always justify the cost of a new PC.

[SuperDave]

I did my part a purchased a new one to make a total of seven.

[DaveLembke]

With Tiger Direct, Newegg, and other stores that sell parts, the decline may be because they cant track the many many people building their own computers these days.

The last new desktop I bought was from Radio Shack in Dec. 2003, a Compaq S6030NX tower for $549 with Athlon XP 2800+ 256MB RAM, 80GB HDD, and Windows XP Home and to make it a gaming system I added a $80 GeForce FX 5200 AGP 8x video card.

The last new laptops bought were in November 2009, a Toshiba Satellite with 17" widescreen and Athlon II 2.5Ghz CPU and Radeon HD GPU running Windows 7 32-bit on 3GB RAM and 320GB HDD, and a Toshiba Netbook NB205 with Atom 1.66Ghz CPU and 160GB HDD with 10.1" display running Windows XP Home on 1GB RAM.

*The desktop from Dec. 2003 has since been upgraded 2 times with all new guts in the original minitower case, and since Dec. 2003 I have also bought and built about 50 computers using Newegg mostly for parts, but sometimes Tiger Direct. This year alone I have built 6 new computers for people who game.

So while tablets may cause a reduction of sales in areas / countries where people are new to computers and really need the mobility of it, here in the USA the reduction is most likely due to many system builders like myself who build good quality Windows 7 OS gaming systems for people and is likely not part of the equation of this articles figures.

[Geek-9pm]

With Tiger Direct, Newegg, and other stores that sell parts, the decline may be because they cant track the many many people building their own computers these days.
....

We can get reports from Intel and AND about sales.
AMD is down hard.
Intel is flat.
ARM chips are up.

Intel currently trails ARM Holdings Plc's (LON:ARM) coalition of chipmakers in the mobile chip market, with the ARM alliance owning over 95 percent of smartphone and tablet processor sales by volume.  At the 2013 Mobile World Congress, Intel is trying different strategies to lure buyers away from ARM.

[evilfantasy]

We can get reports from Intel and AND about sales.
AMD is down hard.
Intel is flat.
ARM chips are up.

I think it was patio that told me (a few years ago) something about Intel would soon own or at least control AMD. I think it's more fact than we all may know. AMD Spikes 14%: Rumors of Intel Buy, Acer Laptops, Xbox

With Tiger Direct, Newegg, and other stores that sell parts, the decline may be because they cant track the many many people building their own computers these days.

True. I subscribe to both the Newegg and Tiger Direct "daily sale" news letters. It may be last years 'best of' parts they offer but there is nothing wrong with them in quality and specs and the discounts are sometimes up to 70 or even 80 percent. Newegg recently launched another site, NeweggFlash.com. Worth checking out and subscribing to.

It's almost as if the slowdown in real improvements to the underlying technology has translated into people realizing they don't need the latest and greatest PC.

Not just home users either but more importantly the bottom line is business sales. Those who have thousands of computers can now just upgrade parts instead of needing an entire new unit. The supply has caught up to the demand with the PC. Now it's the mobile office that manufacturers are battling for supremacy. One day that supply will also start to pull even with the demand...

For the home user you can also get some really good deals buying refurbished these days. They have the same warranty as if they were new and are refurbished/guarantied by the manufacturer. Nothing wrong with that IMO.

[DaveLembke]

by: evilfantasy

For the home user you can also get some really good deals buying refurbished these days. They have the same warranty as if they were new and are refurbished/guarantied by the manufacturer. Nothing wrong with that IMO.

Very true, a business that I use to support the IT for which was a not-for-profit Cooperative Food Store and couldnt afford to buy 40 brand new workstations to replace HP Desktop Vectra Pentium 133, 166 & 200Mhz computers running NT4 and Windows 2000 Pro SP4 went thr route of buying good refurbs. This would have cost about $20,000+/- (est. $500 per computer) in 2008 to replace these systems with brand new computers and they bought HP Certified Refurbs to save a lot of money. ( around $15,000 saved )

Tiger Direct had deals for Refurbished Pentium 4 2.8Ghz HP (SFF) Small Form Factor desktops with 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD,  and DVD ROM, running Windows XP Professional for just $125 each which also came with a 3 month warranty.

If we had to buy Windows XP Professional the pricetag for just the OS at the time was like $139.99. I showed this deal to the Director of IT, who then showed it to the GM, and it was an easy sell to get computer upgrades as well as the Windows XP Pro operating system was cheaper bundled with these systems than buying XP Pro OS alone, so it was like buying the OS at discount and getting the refurbished computers for free.

We ended up buying 40 of these to replace all computers that were 10+ years old and this increased productivity of the users not having to wait for programs to load etc as well as the calls to IT help desk slowed drastically with problems in which the most common remedy was try rebooting and if it happens again someone will visit the user. Users and management were both getting frustrated with how frequent these aged and tired systems most of which had been on 24/7/365 for almost 10 years were acting up frequently.

We were able to replace all 40 systems with far more powerful computers for around $5000. A great Tiger Direct corporate sales rep, Mike Wooten, gave us a quantity discount so we got them even cheaper at like $119.99 each + shipping for buying 40 of them.

They are still using those systems today and they got a good 5 years out of them so far. All 40 are still running without problems. New management took over in 2009 and I left, but I still have contacts there in marketing etc that I stay in the loop with to get inside info on the health of the IT etc and offer free advice to them. They plan on using these systems beyond April 2014 when XP is no longer supported since many of these computer uses now use server side processing via Citrix client connection to servers.

[evilfantasy]

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (Wi-Fi), 16GB tablets go for $499.99 new. I had some Amazon.com coupon codes and last month and used them to buy one refurbished. I took my time and pounced on one for $329.99 shipped. It is supplied and backed by Amazon.com as well as being refurbished and warrantied (1 year) by Samsung. There is nothing used looking or feeling about it other than it coming in a generic looking shipping box that was factory sealed by Samsung. They have been coming up on Groupon.com once a month or so for $299.99 shipped.

I also grabbed a SanDisk 32GB Micro SDHC card for the tablet for $18.99 from Amazon.com. It even came with a USB card reader that almost fell apart in my hands lol. Good thing I didn't really want the card reader to start with! SanDisk 32GB Micro SDHC Class 4 TF Memory Card for Samsung Galaxy Tablet Tab 2 10.1 Ativ Smart PC Pro Galaxy Music Express Rugby Pro with SoCal Trade, Inc. Micro SD HC & SD Card Reader - Bulk Packed

I highly recommend looking into refurbished devices from the top manufacturers.

[jordan800999]

Please remind me why this is in the news section again ? lol well, obviously with all the increase in mobile technology sales and the introduction of smaller and smaller tablets, phones, and smart devices the use of a computer has significantly dropped!

[BC_Programmer]

Please remind me why this is in the news section again ? lol well, obviously with all the increase in mobile technology sales and the introduction of smaller and smaller tablets, phones, and smart devices the use of a computer has significantly dropped!

I'm not sure how it's "obvious".

[Geek-9pm]

I'm not sure how it's "obvious".

Of course it is "obvious". It is the older meaning of the word. To hide or cover something, get out in front,  steal the show.
Example:
In Walmart here in USA they have a area dedicated to smartphones. Another to cameras. The few laptops they sell are  hidden three aisles down. So the smartphones are obvious to the laptops. (They hide the laptops.)

[BC_Programmer]

Of course it is "obvious". It is the older meaning of the word. To hide or cover something, get out in front,  steal the show.

Obvious means self-evident. There is no archaic definition except for that which exists in your own mind.

Example:
In Walmart here in USA they have a area dedicated to smartphones. Another to cameras. The few laptops they sell are  hidden three aisles down. So the smartphones are obvious to the laptops. (They hide the laptops.)

That doesn't make mobile technology superceding the use of computers obvious anymore than looking at the light fixture section of a home depot makes it clear that lamps are replacing PCs.

[Geek-9pm]

BC:

Obvious means self-evident. There is no archaic definition except for that which exists in your own mind.

No, the old meaning is to be in front of an object.
So smartphones are obviously making PCs archaic.

[BC_Programmer]

BC:No, the old meaning is to be in front of an object.

"Plain; evident; easily discovered, seen or understood;"

Some definitions from the 1920's and earlier define it as "opposing".

None I could find define it as being in front of an object.

[evilfantasy]

You're way off on how and why things are displayed the way they are. It has little to do with what may be more popular and more to do with security and loss prevention.

The televisions are on the very back wall. Doesn't mean they are no longer popular. They are just very hard to steal. Everything displayed is carefully planned out and is where it is due to space, convenience and most importantly for security. You need a lot of display space for the multitude of mobile devices and cameras offered but that isn't the biggest reason why they are front and center. Thieves would be cleaning out cases and cases of devices if they were stored where the laptops are. Laptops and networking hardware (at Walmart) is usually displayed close together. Laptops are hard to conceal so they aren't as much of a target for theft but grouping laptops and networking merchandise together gives loss prevention the opportunity to watch everything on one or two cameras. Also isolating high risk merchandise makes it harder to steal. Same goes for displaying it front and center. Harder to steal.

[Geek-9pm]

Good. Back on topic.
When the say  "PC sales" is almost always means Desktop or Laptop computers.
Microsoft is putting its money on the tablet. It is actually  the Surface.
As you know, Surface is the name of their tablet. Microsoft does not have any PCs like desktops or laptops. 
Here is a new story:
Microsoft channel program will push Surface to businesses
This means the MS does not think there is any point in trying to do a laptop for the business people. Does this go against conventional wisdom?  Would the business community accept a tablet over a laptop? Well, MS thinks  that is an opportunity.
Would Bill Gates say "It is obvious"?

[Salmon Trout]

Microsoft is putting its money on the tablet. It is actually  the Surface.

I thought everybody would have seen all the news stories about Microsoft writing off 900 million dollars (nearly a BILLION DOLLARS) just this last week, because the Surface RT failed miserably. Their shares took a drop of 12.2 percent, representing the
biggest single-day drop in over 13 years.

[Geek-9pm]

representing the
biggest single-day drop in over xx years.

Who said that?
Actually, that applies to a number of economic realities.
If you say 2 years, or 7 years or 33 years; for some segment it has been the worst ever this year or last. The truth is that world economics is entering, or falling, into a new era of uncertainly along with rapid gains and failures.
Apple, Blueberry, Microsoft, Intel and other have had bad news.
Here is a headline from early this month.
BlackBerry shares plunged 28 percent on Friday in 13 years
Three days ago, as posted above y Salmon Trout
Microsoft Experiences Its Biggest Drop Of The Century ... 12 Percent
Back in April
Gold Suffers Its Biggest One Day Loss In 33 Years!
Also Dow Jones Industrial Average All-Time Largest One Day Gains and Losses. Which are mostly in the past five years. The Down Jones is considered the standard indicator for the US stock market.

Therefore, don't imagine that bad PC sales means the end of out world. Even if PC sale where doing fine, a lot of everything else would fall apart anyway. But is their a correlation? Yes!

Did I mention the city of Detroit is bankrupt?

Therefore Geek9pm predicts that when half of the world economy hist the trash can,  we will read about it on smartphones. And we will lament: 'Oh, it was because they were using PCs and did not keep up with the trend. Too bad!"

[Salmon Trout]

You know, Geek, I think you may be right.

[BC_Programmer]

Currently my Mouth has more coffee in it than it has ever had in the last 10 minutes. What this means for the economic future is uncertain.

[patio]

And i haven't had a pomegranate in over 2 months now...

[Geek-9pm]

And i haven't had a pomegranate in over 2 months now...

WOW! I haven't had one for over a year.
Are they going off the market?
Will kiwi fruit  replace them?

[evilfantasy]

Well the Internet did begin to die 5 years ago. http://www.dailytech.com/Mark+Cuban+Claims+Internet+Is+Dead/article11287.htm He should know since it made him filthy rich...