
PC market has seen its first growth quarter in six years - tronotonante
https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/12/gartner-global-pc-shipments-grew-1-4-in-q2-2018-first-increase-in-6-years/
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ksec
Interesting lot of people thought it was business cycles. Which is only partly
true. There is China and PC Gaming. Both are now a huge market. For the past 4
- 5 years, if it wasn't for PC gaming, Unit Shipment would have been falling
10%+ YoY.

Many years ago people thought console would take over gaming. And it turns out
Keyboard and Mouse are irreplaceable for certain type of games. You may never
play PSE or FIFA on your PC any more, but many more strategy games, Online
Games, FPS are still on PC. And as generation of people who grew up in gaming,
there is ever increasing number of people on Twitch or other E-Sport streaming
site.

Unfortunately Apple thinks Gaming is a waste of time. And therefore Mac
doesn't really cater for Games Developers. iOS Gaming is still a result of iOS
popularity rather then Apple making it better. We can used to argue PC gaming
is niche, for nerds, Riva TNT, 3Dfx, Rage 128, Radeon, Geforce.....

Now PC Gaming is no longer a small communities, and will continue to grow into
much larger in the years to come.

~~~
hrktb
FPS are slowly moving to consoles though, and I think most popular genres will
have the same trajectory.

Once there’s enough money to be made, publishers will tackle any issue there
is to move a genre to the bigger audience.

That doesn’t mean for me that PC gaming will fade away, just that it will stay
a limited market where makers will experiment more freely than on the other
marketplaces.

~~~
User23
Console FPS and PC FPS practically play like different genres that happen to
have very similar visuals. I doubt either will replace the other.

~~~
earenndil
What about FPS that are on both?

~~~
ionised
They're always better/smoother/more responsive/customisable on PC.

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raverbashing
I wonder if this is due to a refresh cycle from PS bought in the past 3-5
years

It's 1.4% growth of something that was going downhill for a while already, so
it might not be too impactful

~~~
lozf
Gotta get these last vulnerable processors (Spectre, Meltdown) deployed in
businesses for a good few years, before the next gen fixes come out.

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aioprisan
FTA it's due to business PC growth, not casual PC growth

~~~
Joeri
If that’s true basically the PC market for business has hit bottom. There’s
very little traction for non-PC form factors as daily drivers in business, so
there is a minimum market size just to keep every employee equipped with a
laptop, and this seems to be it.

The consumer market can still drop further though. Most people are fine using
ipads, and probably even better off than with a laptop when all things are
considered.

~~~
TangoTrotFox
I think you're conflating things. A decline in sales does not mean a decline
in usage. Arguably the biggest reason that PC sales have declined is because a
PC from 5+ years ago is now still 100% solid for everything outside of high
end gaming and some esoteric tasks. And even in the case where somebody does
want to engage in e.g. high end gaming, swapping out a video card is fine -
and that's something that's not reflected in these reports which only count
buying new preassembled machines from first party manufacturers.

PC sales were at their peak when machines were outdated in 6 months and
obsolete in 2 years. That era is completely dead. At this point there are
likely literally billions of reasonably high performance machines out in the
world. And I think also more people than ever have realized that 'building
your own computer' is about as difficult as putting together a 10 piece lego
toy, and you get exactly what you want, and you likely save a reasonable
amount of money.

~~~
ghaff
I was with you until your last sentence. Speaking as someone who built PCs for
years. My impression is more along the lines is that you still often run into
the same weird incompatibilities that you always did and that cause you to ask
yourself "Seriously? What made you forget the two days you spent debugging
that weird GPU driver interaction LAST time."

As a result, the last time I decided I still needed a Windows box but both my
old DIY systems were down for various counts, I just bought a 17" Alienware
laptop which worked, reduced the clutter, and is just fine. (And I'm not sure
it cost more than I'd have ended up spending.)

~~~
ghthor
No one is going to sell me a pre built machine running arch linux as the host,
with Windows 10 in a virtual machine with a vfio passthrough GPU and usb
controller so I can utilize VR hardware. Did it take me 2 days debugging USB
controller and threadripper pcie bugs in the linux kernel, yep, but totally
worth it once I strapped on my VR headset and it worked flawlessly. Also the
peace of mind that Microsoft is isolated from most of the hardware in my
machine.

------
nailer
Original source:
[https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3881812](https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3881812)

Includes both laptops and desktops

------
agumonkey
also six years since I've seen osnews linked on any frontpage (happy the site
is still alive)

~~~
juusto
I still follow it almost daily, "grew" up on it and if it would disappear I
would feel sad for it.

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Zealotux
What was the mining market's impact on PC market? Surely it must've had some
consequence on figures.

~~~
foepys
None. These stats only include completely assembled and ready-to-use PCs from
Lenovo, HP, Dell, etc. Individual components like GPUs are not included.

~~~
jjeaff
I wouldn't say none. The massive increase in GPU prices did spur some to buy
prebuilt where otherwise, they would have built a custom machine. Many large
companies that sell higher end machines didn't jack up their prices nearly as
much as the graphics cards alone.

Also, some miners were buying prebuilt systems to harvest the GPU, then out a
cheaper GPU in it and sell it.

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gallerdude
I can’t think of any major, consumer-friendly reason? Right now, the PC market
feels a bit stagnant.

~~~
terminalcommand
I think the interest in PCs grew, especially amongst the younger generation.
With the new budget CPUs offering real good performance (a 8th gen i3 can
offer approximately the same performance as a 7th gen i5), you can get much
higher performance for your money than laptops. The price gap is much more
evident when it comes to gaming.

Among my friends in their 20s, most of them want to build a PC. It could be
the case that my generation didn't experience the growth and the decline of
the PC market and we don't appreciate the value of laptops yet. The hype for
building a custom PC certainly exists.

But from a consumer's standpoint, I also think laptops win in most cases.

Correction: Thanks to the reply, I noticed that "PC Market" statistics
included both Laptops and Desktop PCs. I am leaving this post as is, as it
represents my ideas on why there is still a -possibly growing?- interest for
desktop PCs.

~~~
scarface74
_I think the interest in PCs grew, especially amongst the younger generation.
With the new budget CPUs offering real good performance (a 8th gen i3 can
offer approximately the same performance as a 7th gen i5), you can get much
higher performance for your money than laptops. The price gap is much more
evident when it comes to gaming._

The growth in the PC market had nothing to do with the consumer market.

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/pc-market-appears-
to...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/pc-market-appears-to-have-
grown-for-the-first-time-since-2012/)

 _Gartner reports that the growth was driven by increased business sales and
that consumer shipments declined. IDC similarly pointed to the "business-
driven refresh cycle" as a reason for the increase. This mirrors Microsoft's
financial reporting; the software giant distinguishes between business and
consumer sales of Windows and Office, and the general pattern over the last
few quarters is that business sales have been robust even as consumer demand
continues to soften. Enterprises are migrating to Windows 10, and they're
buying new hardware to do so._

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mey
I wonder where the high demands of VR are driving the change. If I wanted to
do VR I would finally have to upgrade my 5year old PC desktop that had been
great. Aftermarket SSD and GPU greatly expand it's life.

~~~
dominostars
I'm less skeptical than the other responders. VRChat in particular has been
quite a viral sensation with a few popular memes, and a lot of twitch.tv
activity.

VR is what got me to build my own PC after a decade of exclusive mac use.

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ianlevesque
Maybe corporate PCs finally needed a refresh.

~~~
arenaninja
Maybe. Our company is doing a large refresh, but we no longer get physical
PCs, it's all thin clients to a virtualized environment

I'm unsure whether those units are counted as part of the PC market

~~~
candiodari
And we all remember those from the 1980s. Those things were so bad that we
switched to windows in the first place.

~~~
stefan_
It's amazing, every 5 years another boneheaded IT manager revives the whole
thinclient thing.

~~~
Lio
The company I currently contract with does almost everything in Google apps or
other web based services.

That allows me to use Linux (by corporate policy again) for day to day
development.

Does web based enterprise apps count as thin client?

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Theodores
New PCs are needed when new employees come along.

There is an extraordinary amount of full employment at the moment in 'b*s4it
jobs', those pointless jobs that don't really matter but somehow exist. Small
to medium sized businesses just bloat out with these positions over time and
only a harsh recession means that these jobs get systematically culled. With
these jobs you need yet another PC. You can't buy fancy laptops as there is
status value in those things and a PC is as glorified as a phone on the desk
of someone doing one of these make-believe-jobs of inane pointlessness. Demand
for stationary cupboard supplies is probably also up 1.4% with BIC taking a
few sales from PaperMate in an otherwise flat market.

This is the sort of headline you get when the housing market needs a 'boost'.
Anecdotally you may know that nobody has been able to buy/sell for ages and
that prices are not going up, however, some survey that is independent but
paid for buy a building society/bank comes out to give the impression that the
market is moving again.

The Update in the story cites another report where the numbers for HP and
Lenovo are different, so the headline 1.4% is margin of error, not a genuine
sign of a market on the move.

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api
Is it in the developing world? Mobile is very limited due to small devices and
more importantly crippled by design OSes. I've thought for a while that
mobile's adoption in the developing world would be a gateway drug for
computing and that PC adoption would follow after wages rise and/or PC prices
drop.

~~~
xfer
Most people in developing world use mobile devices purely for communication
and music/videos, i don't think that these uses will drive rise of PC usage.

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nobrains
Potential reason: Fortnite?

~~~
zamadatix
Following the source chain back to Gartner their conclusion on the data was:

"PC shipment growth in the second quarter of 2018 was driven by demand in the
business market, which was offset by declining shipments in the consumer
segment. In the consumer space, the fundamental market structure, due to
changes on PC user behavior, still remains, and continues to impact market
growth. Consumers are using their smartphones for even more daily tasks, such
as checking social media, calendaring, banking and shopping, which is reducing
the need for a consumer PC. In the business segment, PC momentum will weaken
in two years when the replacement peak for Windows 10 passes. PC vendors
should look for ways to maintain growth in the business market as the Windows
10 upgrade cycle tails off."

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FollowSteph3
I think it’s a blip caused by people upgrading their cpu due to spectre and
meltdown. Not always because their cpu may be exposed but also as an excuse.

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woranl
I wonder how much of this is related to the new MacBook keyboard.

~~~
cutler
Or Macbook/iMac prices. My desktop has been a Hackintosh for the last 7 years.
When my 5-year-old Macbook Pro dies I'll be looking for a Hackintoshable PC
laptop.

~~~
Moto7451
Really I'm responding to you and the GP, but based on the article:

> Gartner estimates that worldwide PC shipments grew 1.4 percent to 62.1
> million units in Q2 2018. The top five vendors were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple,
> and Acer.

Apple is part of the market increase.

MacRumors highlighted Apple's numbers from the same report. They grew 3% YoY:
[https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/12/mac-shipments-up-
in-q2-...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/07/12/mac-shipments-up-in-q2-2018/)

~~~
ghaff
Interesting that, while the rest of the market is still significant, it's
shrinking pretty rapidly compared to the leaders.

The Apple numbers are always a useful reminder of what a bubble I'm in. While
7% isn't trivial, any event I attend has a _lot_ of Macs (and more of the
other laptops are probably running Linux than Windows).

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foepys
This is blog spam. It only links to this article:
[https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/12/gartner-global-pc-
shipmen...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/07/12/gartner-global-pc-shipments-
grew-1-4-in-q2-2018-first-increase-in-6-years/)

~~~
ordu
Moreover NoScript warns about potential XSS-attack on that blog post.

