PC Sales Drop 10% In The First Quarter: Surprised? Do You Care?

[steven36]

People always looked forward to upgrading their PCs, there has always been a "PC upgrade cycle" and one will again emerge. Someday.

 

 

Microsoft investors must hope so. The company is selling at a price/earnings multiple of 40 on hopes that Windows 10 sales will soon boom and re-energize PC growth.

Surely. Hopefully. Maybe?

Leading tech tracking companies IDC and Gartner both announced Q1 2016 PC sales results, and they were horrible. Sales were down 9.5%-11.5% depending on which tracker you asked. And that's after a horrible Q4 2015 when sales were off more than 10%. PC sales have now declined for six straight quarters, and sales are roughly where they were in 2007, nine years ago.

Oh yeah, that was when the iPhone launched - June 2007. And just a couple of years before the iPad launched. Correlation, or causation?

Amazingly, when Q4 ended the forecasters were still optimistic of a stabilization and turnaround in PC sales. Typical analyst verbage was like this from IDC, "Commercial adoption of Windows 10 is expected to accelerate, and consumer buying should also stabilize by the second half of the year. Most PC users have delayed an upgrade, but can only maintain this for so long before facing security and performance issues." And just to prove that hope springs eternal from the analyst breast, here's IDC's forecast for 2016 after the horrible Q1. "In the short term, the PC market must still grapple with limited consumer interest and competition from other infrastructure upgrades in the commercial market. Nevertheless... things should start picking up in terms of Windows 10 pilots turning into actual PC purchases."

Fascinating. Once again, the upturn is just around the corner. People have always looked forward to upgrading their PCs, there has always been a "PC upgrade cycle" and one will again emerge. Someday. At least the analysts hope so. Maybe?

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) investors must hope so. The company is selling at a price/earnings multiple of 40 on hopes that Windows 10 sales will soon boom and re-energize PC growth. Surely. Hopefully. Maybe?

 

The world has shifted, and far too many people don't like to recognize the shift. When Windows 8 launched it was clear that interest in PC software was diminishing. What was once a major front page event, a Windows upgrade, was unimportant. By the time Windows 10 came along there was so little interest that its launch barely made any news at all. This market, these products, are really no longer relevant to the growth of personal technology.

Back when I predicted that Windows 8 would be a flop I was inundated with hate mail. It was clear that Ballmer was a terrible CEO and would soon be replaced by the board. Same when I predicted that Surface tablets would not sell well, and that all Windows devices would not achieve significant share. People called me "an Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Fanboy" or a "Microsoft hater." Actually, neither was true. It was just clear that a major market shift was happening in computing. The world was rapidly going mobile, and cloud-based, and the PC just wasn't going to be relevant. As the PC lost relevancy, so too would Microsoft because it completely missed the market and its entries were far too tied to old ways of thinking about personal and corporate computing - not to mention the big lead competitors had in devices, apps and cloud services.

I've never said that modern PCs are bad products. I have a son half way through a PhD in Neurobiological Engineering. He builds all kinds of brain models and three-dimensional brain images and cell structure plots - and he does all kinds of very exotic math. His world is built on incredibly powerful, fast PCs. He loves Windows 10 and he loves PCs - and he really "doesn't get" tablets. And I truly understand why. His work requires local computational power and storage, and he loves Windows 10 over all other platforms.

But he is not a trend. His deep understanding of the benefits of Windows 10, and some of the PC manufacturers as well as those who sell upgrade componentry, is very much a niche. While he depends heavily on Microsoft and Wintel manufacturers to do his work, he is a niche user. (BTW he uses a Nexus phone and absolutely loves it, as well. And he can wax eloquently about the advantages he achieves by using an Android device.)

Today, I doubt I will receive hardly any comments to this column. Because to most people, the PC is nearly irrelevant. People don't actually care about PC sales results or forecasts. Not nearly as much as, say, care about whether or not the iPhone 6se advances the mobile phone market in a meaningful way.

Most people do their work, almost if not all their work, on a mobile device. They depend on cloud and SaaS (software-as-a-service) providers and get a lot done on apps. What they can't do on a phone they do on a tablet, by and large. They may, or may not, use a PC of some kind (Mac included in that reference) but it is not terribly important to them. PCs are now truly generic, like a refrigerator, and if they need one they don't much care who made it or anything else - they just want it to do whatever task they have yet to migrate to their mobile world.

The amazing thing is not that PC sales have fallen for six quarters. That was easy to predict back in 2013. The amazing thing is that some people still don't want to accept that this trend will never reverse. And many people, even though they haven't carried around a laptop for months (years?) and don't use a Windows mobile device, still think Microsoft is a market leader and has a great future. PCs, and for the most part Microsoft, are simply no more relevant than Sears, BlackBerry, or the Encyclopedia Britannica. Yet it is somewhat startling that some people have failed to think about the impact this has on their company, companies that make PC software and hardware - and the impact this will have on their lives - and likely their portfolios.

 

The Source

[Beamslider]

Well I use phones, tablets, laptop and a desktop.

 

The laptop and desktop are high end circa 4 years ago.   They both run fast and there is no reason to waste money upgrading either.

 

There is no real software out there other than possibly some games that would stretch the graphics so why would I buy newer ones?  Same no doubt for many people.

 

Long gone are the days with desktops and laptops where you really get any speed benefit upgrading to new hardware.  Tablets yes and phones yes but not desktops

[shorty6100]

I may get a tablet or laptop someday, but give me a good old PC with a large screen for gaming and a workstation for my crappy eyes any day.

[steven36]

47 minutes ago, Beamslider said:

Well I use phones, tablets, laptop and a desktop.

 

The laptop and desktop are high end circa 4 years ago.   They both run fast and there is no reason to waste money upgrading either.

 

There is no real software out there other than possibly some games that would stretch the graphics so why would I buy newer ones?  Same no doubt for many people.

 

Long gone are the days with desktops and laptops where you really get any speed benefit upgrading to new hardware.  Tablets yes and phones yes but not desktops

PCs are becoming  one with phones very  privacy intrusive   , I have friends who  use to use pcs all the time now they mostly are on the phone  maybe they turn there pc once a month  for many years . When people never use them i guess its not worth upgrading .  You may have 3 devices  but there's no way youre  using all 3 a lot  most people ether chose one or the other . I have more than 1 pc but do i raely run 2 at a time uless im doing some video encodeing  or something and dont  want tied  to a pc with a high cpu task.  I accepted   the fact that most likely PCs will never recover by now. But I cant stand phones and looking at no small screens and really i dont really like Laptops ether  so a tablet  is just not for me . Most likely when every one is on 2 and one tablets  but gamers ill still  be on a tower . My windows machine is a newer  mini tower i plug it in to a a 1080p Wide Screen  monitor that's about as small as I'm going to go for now. I could of bought a laptop  or  tablet  but i  dont like them. They claim phones will be able plug in too monitors one day  and play full HD  and this will be the real turning point  but it still never happened and if it happens it will be years before they become cheap  as a mid grade tower . 

[Holmes]

You people make it sound like ten is one hundred and better question why is ten percent important oh yea its not end of story.  The sales of computers are never going to stay constant there going to have there up's and down only someone whos anal retentive is going to care about that small of a percentage drop.

[oliverjia]

The logic of the original author is flawed. He did not take into account the fact the ever since the "Core i-x" series, the CPU power has not go up significantly, hence there is basically little reason for the consumers to shell out money to "upgrade". I bet if Intel's CPU still can follow Moore's law, new PC sales won't slide, if no significant increase, because the economy is increasing, and the population is increasing. Think about this: if your current CPU is a Pentium-3, will you upgrade it to a Core i-5?

 

New PC sales is not a very useful parameter to predict the tech picture. A more useful number is the number of PCs still in service, or the total number of hours people spend on PC. I bet these numbers don't slide as much as the numbers indicated. 

 

Again, nowadays, people lack of critical thinking think they know the reality and produce all sorts of BS and spread them all over the Internet. We should critically analyze every piece of data that is feed to us. Otherwise we'll be misled. 

[steven36]

There's not been no ups for PCs for six quarters there's only been downs . I know what goes up  must go down but you cant make something go up unless people buys . You can already do anything with pcs that anyone would want to do. .  No processor for  PCs  interest  people who buy cell phones over PCs  10 to one . They only inerest computer geeks  and gamers  they dont interest the masses. They sell over of a billion cell phones a year. They only make a few Million PC units  a year and it's decreasing every year . You can say PC will  start  selling again like Gartner has for the last 3 years and have been wrong but that just makes you wrong.  The truth  will be reveled  once  they start charging everyone for windows 10 . i told everyone last summer by them  giving it away free for a year its going too take 2 years for us to know , Maybe by July 2017 we will know . But if they keep giving away free like they are no one is going buy PCs  expect for  a few businesses  much .  People will buy smart phones and but pcs no . Gartner's predictions  that they will sell  a few more units in 2017  is based on the fact windows 10 want be free anymore .  I read Microsoft is not going say what they plain to do tell July  so he dont know  and still  if they charge for it  it dont mean people will  buy it they cant give  it away  good free its been almost a year  and Windows 10  only holds  a little over  15 % .

[Sylence]

when I read this I feel like I'm reading children's tale. reallly low quality author

anyway, the real PC sales is always higher than what the numbers show. a huge amount of hardware sales is not even tracked in many places in the world

[Holmes]

I completely agree saeed_dc when I first read the title I said click bait because ten is nothing and its always going to be that way.  I can tell by walkking into my local microcenter on a weekday not even the weekend that pc sales are not down and thats just at microcenter I go off what my eyes can see not what someone has said and what my eyes see says there not down sales of proprietary computers arent as high as sales of custom computer parts I always see people in microcenter that are buying parts to build a computer with.  I know that there are alot of people like my friend matt who doesnt even use his computer alot of times because he just uses his phone.  When I walked into cincinnati bell a month ago I didnt see very many people in there and something tells me if I called verizon and asked how there sales have been there going to say great because they want to make themselves look good when the actual sales are most likely not that good or not that much or great they may be good there not great.

[LeeSmithG]

Last time I purchased a P.C was in 1999, from Time Computers in Croydon, England.

 

Since then I just build what I want for my purpose.

 

Majority of people use a computer for downloading porno, reading/writing emails, odd forums, browsing and the odd letter.

 

So they don't need to spend more than £200 on a laptop.

 

Only people that need 24g.b. r.a.m. ssd drive, super fast graphics card with high spec motherboards are professional graphics artists and gamers.

 

I never understand why some people brag about their specs, when all they do is what I first mentioned.

 

It's the how big is ones penis argument.

[Sylence]

I rated this topic and don't see any reason to explain why. it's perfectly legal  

[steven36]

5 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

I rated this topic and don't see any reason to explain why. it's perfectly legal  

I  thought you did and you got the nerve  to call people trolls in other post . we had bad problems with it once were people went around to all our post  and rated them down we had to report them to admins for killing the site. Same reason they dont have mark down on each post here people abuses them .

[Sylence]

If they keep the track of individual users' ratings they will find out that I have other things to do besides finding and rating each of your posts. don't think I'm the author of your pains 

[steven36]

57 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

If they keep the track of individual users' ratings they will find out that I have other things to do besides finding and rating each of your posts. don't think I'm the author of your pains 

Oh i know  you dont you're just a Microsoft Shill .  I think those guys left the site  now , you just  rate up post were  are windows 10 commercials written by other shills and people fuss because only 15% even uses windows 10 . And  you rate down any truthful post  about bugs in windows 10.  or the fact Windows 10 want save the PC  and the fact  they ruined it when they made windows 8 so its too late . I keep up  with my own post  and know im only being  attacked  when i post on bugs of windows 10  or the state of the PC industry . That's why Ive not  posted very much here lately .

 

If Microsoft gives it away another year they will get a lot of users though because they made Windows 7 so hard to update it takes a whole day many people update to windows 10 so they dont have fool with clean installing windows 7. but this still wont ever sell windows 10 or pcs ether .. No one buys free  because its free.  Small business and Home users and Bring your  own PCs  it's free . Only its not free to Enterprise that buy there own PCs. I'm on Windows 8.1  mine updates fast still so no need  for me to take a risk of installing a NEW O/S.

 

If its not broke why fix it ? I get updates tell 2023  and mine is  not a gaming rig .  Its just for normal use . Im interested on seeing what they actually plan to do to the ones who upgraded for  free in 5 or 10 years from   now . It says  you will only get updates tell 2025 and no major updates after 2020 at Microsoft's site ..

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle

[Sylence]

1 hour ago, steven36 said:

Oh i know  you dont you're just a Microsoft Shill .  I think those guys left the site  now , you just  rate up post were  are windows 10 commercials written by other shills and people fuss because only 15% even uses windows 10 . And  you rate down any truthful post  about bugs in windows 10.  or the fact Windows 10 want save the PC  and the fact  they ruined it when they made windows 8 so its too late . I keep up  with my own post  and know im only being  attacked  when i post on bugs of windows 10  or the state of the PC industry . That's why Ive not  posted very much here lately .

 

I have no idea what you're talking about  

 

1 hour ago, steven36 said:

If Microsoft gives it away another year they will get a lot of users though because they made Windows 7 so hard to update it takes a whole day many people update to windows 10 so they dont have fool with clean installing windows 7. but this still wont ever sell windows 10 or pcs ether .. No one buys free  because its free.  Small business and Home users and Bring your  own PCs  it's free . Only its not free to Enterprise that buy there own PCs. I'm on Windows 8.1  mine updates fast still so no need  for me to take a risk of installing a NEW O/S.

 

you think they throttle updates download speed intentionally so users upgrade to 10? lolol

 

1 hour ago, steven36 said:

If its not broke why fix it ? I get updates tell 2023  and mine is  not a gaming rig .  Its just for normal use . Im interested on seeing what they actually plan to do to the ones who upgraded for  free in 5 or 10 years from   now . It says  you will only get updates tell 2025 and no major updates after 2020 at Microsoft's site ..

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/lifecycle

 

each year there's gonna be a big upgrade like Redstone. I think I've read it somewhere in the forum that there's gonna be a Redstone 2 next year.

[steven36]

13 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

 

I have no idea what you're talking about  

 

 

you think they throttle updates download speed intentionally so users upgrade to 10? lolol

 

 

each year there's gonna be a big upgrade like Redstone. I think I've read it somewhere in the forum that there's gonna be a Redstone 2 next year.

I dont think they will give major upgrades no more than 5 years and security updates no more than 10 years ,  the most they ever gave  was 12 years and there having a Duck because of there is still 450 million on XP .

http://windowsitpro.com/windows-xp/two-years-after-support-ended-windows-xp-still-powering-millions-pcs

 

As far as Windows 7 if they dont fix  it people will keep going to Windows 10 as it gets better if they leave it a free upgrade 1 more year.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3055885/microsoft-windows/its-time-for-microsoft-to-fix-the-windows-7-update-slowdowns.html

[Sylence]

3 minutes ago, steven36 said:

I dont think they will give major upgrades no more than 5 years and security updates no more 10 years ,  the most they ever gave  was 12 and there having a Duck because of this still 450 million on XP .

http://windowsitpro.com/windows-xp/two-years-after-support-ended-windows-xp-still-powering-millions-pcs

 

As far as Windows 7 if they dont fix  people will keep going to Windows 10 as it gets better if they leave it a free upgrade 1 more year.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3055885/microsoft-windows/its-time-for-microsoft-to-fix-the-windows-7-update-slowdowns.html

 

They must be proud of making an OS which after 14 years still used by millions of people. 

I had these update problems they're talking about too 2/3 years ago. updates on Windows 7 and 8.1 are so sensitive that if they get installed out of order (by user's selection) they can render the whole Windows useless. in Windows 10 the updates are pretty straightforward and only 1 update is enough for the whole OS. 

 

so these problems are nothing new at all. if you had looked up in the Google 4 years ago you would get more results for Windows 7 update problems. I used it since lunch and the reason for 50% of my Windows re-installations was update malfunctions

[steven36]

11 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

 

They must be proud of making an OS which after 14 years still used by millions of people. 

I had these update problems they're talking about too 2/3 years ago. updates on Windows 7 and 8.1 are so sensitive that if they get installed out of order (by user's selection) they can render the whole Windows useless. in Windows 10 the updates are pretty straightforward and only 1 update is enough for the whole OS. 

 

so these problems are nothing new at all. if you had looked up in the Google 4 years ago you would get more results for Windows 7 update problems. I used it since lunch and the reason for 50% of my Windows re-installations was update malfunctions

I only stated  On windows 7  3 years I dont remember having update problems like others are now.  I went 2 years and never had to reformat . When I bought windows 8 ,  I always had trouble  with updates hanging up so I downloaded the 3 updates you needed to install windows 8.1 trough  the store and installed them and windows 8.1 . I never had problems with win. 8.1 updates . On 2 pcs   But i did have some trouble with windows 10 updates  I always manged to fix them though. There still some having problem with updates in windows 10 . Other topic about it here.

[Sylence]

10 minutes ago, steven36 said:

I only stated  On windows 7  3 years I dont remember having update problems like others are now.  I went 2 years and never had to reformat . When I bought windows 8 ,  I always had trouble  with updates hanging up so I downloaded the 3 updates you needed to install windows 8.1 trough  the store and installed them and windows 8.1 . I never had problems with win. 8.1 updates . On 2 pcs   But i did have some trouble with windows 10 updates  I always manged to fix them though. There still some having problem with updates in windows 10 . Other topic about it here.

 

so these problems can happen to anyone on any OS, less in Windows 10 but still not zero. some of the thirty party apps like DWS can cause trouble for Win 10 updates too but I've never seen that myself. as a workaround for Windows 7 update problems I had to always keep an updated ISO file with integrated updates  

[steven36]

23 minutes ago, saeed_dc said:

 

so these problems can happen to anyone on any OS, less in Windows 10 but still not zero. some of the thirty party apps like DWS can cause trouble for Win 10 updates too but I've never seen that myself. as a workaround for Windows 7 update problems I had to always keep an updated ISO file with integrated updates  

Windows 8 was the worse one about windows update for me not installing  on a clean install.  I still maintain one windows 7 O/S on my network  it installs  updates OK its just takes  2 or 3 hours  to get them up .I read to do a clean install now it takes a whole day.  On Windows 10 i just had errors i had to fix sometimes  but my  HHD  went out  in the fall I replaced  the HHD and installed Linux and done updates in about 20 minutes .and I bought a new  Dell Mini Tower with Windows 8.1 .  So i dont know nothing about those errors those guys at MS are having  on windows 10 now but what i read . I have another Windows 7  that Ive not updated in along time I use it only to do Video editing  i dont even need internet for this , but if i get bored i may update it one day lol.

[haxzion]

How can PC sales drop when Win10 is such a huge success?

Or maybe Win10 is as crap as Win8 and more?

Microsoft with their crap OS literally changed the definition of a desktop this is why PC sales keep dropping.

People who need a pc for professional use turned over to apple and MS is just stroking their "unified piece of shit" 

 

[steven36]

58 minutes ago, haxzion said:

How can PC sales drop when Win10 is such a huge success?

Or maybe Win10 is as crap as Win8 and more?

Microsoft with their crap OS literally changed the definition of a desktop this is why PC sales keep dropping.

People who need a pc for professional use turned over to apple and MS is just stroking their "unified piece of shit" 

 

Windows 8 was crap Windows 8.1 is not bad It's very stable  it would had been better if they would gave us that start menu they promised us but  instead  the pushed Windows 10 3 months early. Most noobs never got the concept  of How to boot right to desktop

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-boot-straight-to-the-desktop-in-windows-8-1/

 

And how to install a free start menu

http://www.classicshell.net/downloads/

 

Too many windows users that dont know how to do nothing but use office and  play around in there web browser ,  They cant  even install programs without  getting adware  so they didn't like windows 8.1 .

 

It was like Vista  were people had  PCs  not made for it and developers never made x64 software yet so it didn't have a chance . Once something gets a bad rep  Microsoft has never been able to recover from it and Windows 10 has got the worse rep yet ...its a free upgrade  and no one is rushing  to upgrade too it if  it would been more like Windows 7 with DX 12  we would all be on it by now . But still that wouldn't get those other 1.5 billion  people  on phones  to buy Windows. Around 1.5 billion people worldwide currently use some kind of Windows operating system and there's more  than 3 billion people are now using the Internet that's  a lot pcs they need to sell , I wonder how many of 1.5 billion on Windows be on phones most  of the time ?

[Jordan]

Too much personal attacks!

Please guys, a minimum of rerspect is mandatory for a clean and constructive debate.

Thread Closed.