
PC Sales Drop to Historic Lows - jseliger
http://www.wsj.com/articles/pc-sales-drop-to-historic-lows-1452634605
======
ChuckMcM
This is not unexpected, so many people who own a PC don't need a personal
"computer" they just need a system to deploy pre-built network applications
to. And while it is "weird" to see that be true, it also reflects the shift in
media consumption and communications.

Of course some of us (like me) still want development systems, what were once
distinguished by being called "workstations" which separated them from "PCs"
by their use in professional code development. I expect that as the market
shrinks the percentage of Linux installs as a fraction of the overall market
will rise. I'm curious to see how it effects pricing. Once it drops below
100M/year in shipments the ability for the smaller makers to draft on the big
orders made by the larger makers will go away and their prices will have to
come up, I can't see that they have any margin left to give up.

~~~
pjmlp
My workstations have been laptops since 2000, only replaced when they died or
got stolen (in one case).

~~~
ChuckMcM
The interesting question for me is how long you will be able to do that. I can
imagine a future where the "application only" laptops have hard crypto that
prevents anyone from tampering with the OS. And the OS only allows installs
from the "App Store" (generic). Think IOS meets Macbook meets UEFI++.

That will be the "sweet spot" for people who just use laptops as tools and are
tired of being afraid of being hacked all the time. That will be the only kind
of laptop many business people can get.

Because of that the marginal cost to make a laptop that can have some other OS
loaded on to it will go up, and probably go up dramatically. I think it is
fortunate that for now a laptop can last 5 years easily as its easier to shell
out 3 - 5K for a laptop if you'll have it for 5 years than it is for something
that won't.

~~~
pjmlp
In a way that is kind of the full stack computers we had up until the PC won
the war of the home computers, right?

Upgrading an 8 or 16 bit computer usually meant buying a new one. And although
they had hardware and memory specs, little was known about the OSes
themselves.

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xpda
Advances in desktop CPU speed have been minimal over the past few years. If I
could get a reasonably priced PC that's 50% faster than my two-year-old
system, I'd buy it today. Instead, the best performance gain for me is a PCIe
SSD.

~~~
Pengwin
Exactly. My 4 year old desktop PC with an Intel sandy bridge CPU, which i
added an SSD to a year ago, is perfectly fine for day to day work.

energy efficiency since i purchased my computer has improved greatly, but i
have no reason for a more efficient CPU, its still performing fast enough for
all desktop applications and has no battery.

~~~
simonh
Don't feel bad about your system not being as efficient as newer models. The
carbon footprint of manufacturing it dwarfs that of its lifetime electricity
usage, so scrapping it for a more efficient machine would be a false
environmental economy. Better to make maximum usage of that sunk environmental
cost.

------
Animats
This is success. Desktop PCs work and do their jobs. Like the large appliance
industry, sales will continue due to replacements and new startups, but the
initial rollout is done.

~~~
simonh
The fact that many models now have SSDs with longer lifetimes than hard drives
helps too. I agree. While I'm sure tablets have had an effect on PC sales, I
don't think it necessarily follows that the overall need for PCs has
diminished. Emerging market expansion and overall economic growth will tend to
expand it. I don't know which of these forces is winning out, but certainly
one factor is that they're just lasting longer.

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henryw
Google link to see for non-subscribers:
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj97Nao-
KXKAhUQ4WMKHQUEBgcQqQIIHjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fpc-
sales-drop-to-historic-
lows-1452634605&usg=AFQjCNHO7hsz31GeHy2cFg7H0XHHXf7uJg&sig2=C23WwZlyRn5DRrheN1G7iw)

~~~
kencausey
The 'web' link now standard below the title on the discussions page for each
article provides basically this functionality. There is no longer a need for
commenters to post such comments.

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tw04
Probably because my 8 year old core2 based desktop is still fast enough for
everything but gaming.

~~~
EvanPlaice
I'm currently using my late 2009 27" iMac.

It's virtually indistinguishable from current models and is more than fast
enough for everything except gaming.

I added more ram so I could run some VMs, and recently replaced the Hard
Drive. Otherwise, I don't see this thing failing in the foreseeable future.

Doesn't make me miss the days of using cheap plastic PCs with a 3 year usable
life.

~~~
jseliger
_It 's virtually indistinguishable from current models and is more than fast
enough for everything except gaming._

I had a 2009 or 2010 model, and while I agree with what you're saying overall,
the new 5K models have incredible screens:
[http://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/01/5k-retina-imac-and-mac-
os-...](http://jakeseliger.com/2015/01/01/5k-retina-imac-and-mac-os-x-
yosemite-thoughts/).

------
cmrdporcupine
At work I have a Z820 dual-Xeon (each w/ 16 cores) specialist workstation
packed with SSD drives and 64GB of RAM.

At home I have a 6 year old beaten up Thinkpad with an i7, 8GB RAM, and a
small SSD.

Apart from when I'm compiling some very heavy workloads, I can't honestly feel
the difference much. For the smaller projects I do at home, it's still zippy.

I thought about getting a faster machine at home to run Quartus at higher
speeds for some FPGA personal projects. But the free web edition will only
ever use 1 core anyways. So almost pointless upgrading.

Tech has become mostly 'good enough' for many years now, even for engineers.
It's only gaming tech and display technologies that are really making me want
something newer.

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azevedomarti
This trend is foreseeable. Mobile devices are replacing part of the function
of the PCs. Besides, the growth of hardware is much faster than the software.
A 7-years old PC is still performing well if we only require basic function.
We do not need a new one. The sales figures will keep declining if there is
not new value provided by PC.

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shams93
I wonder if they count chromeos devices as pc's in this study, currently my
main dev systems are a chromebook and a digital ocean instance that I remote
into.

~~~
shams93
And looking above the answer is yes, but the numbers seem skewed to ios having
the article behind a pay wall its hard to tell how they derived these numbers
it would seem that android rather than is would be in the lead. Its bad news
fir the web in that apple doesn't support the really awesome HTML5 APIs like
webrtc and web midi on ios

------
swang
What I want to know is: how does this affect me as a PC Gaming enthusiast? I'm
guessing these parts will still be made, but maybe not all completely
assembled for someone to take home.

Does this PC label also include laptops? And does this list include Apple? It
seems like they're mentioned but its a little ambiguous as to whether its
included.

~~~
jacobolus
Yes, this includes laptops. Yes this includes Macs, which are up 2.5% (thus
the rest of the PC industry is down more than the headline number; supposedly
vendors beyond the top 5 were hurt most, down like 20% year-over-year as a
group).

Beyond Macs, Asus also up 0.5%, all other PC vendors way down. Overall PC
sales down ~10.5%.

Does anyone know if those numbers include Chromebooks?

~~~
dan1234
Yes, the IDC source article[0] indicates Chromebooks are included.

"PCs include Desktops, Portables, Ultraslim Notebooks, Chromebooks, and
Workstations and do not include handhelds, x86 Servers and Tablets (i.e. iPad,
or Tablets with detachable keyboards running either Windows or Android). Data
for all vendors are reported for calendar periods."

[0][http://m.idc.com//pressRelease/prUS40909316](http://m.idc.com//pressRelease/prUS40909316)

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rebootthesystem
Microsoft has neen responsible for slow sales for years.

Why? Because their insistance in linking thr OS so intimately with
applications effectively stifles upgrades.

Upgrading a PC with a non-trivial amount of software is a complete pain in the
ass. Gone are the days of the OS and apps being independent to the point of
being able to upgrade the OS without losing apps.

In our case we have dozens of workstation we would like to upgrade to new
hardware (and some from Vista to Windows 7). The pronlem comes in when you
realize it takes several weeks for us to re-install, license and configure all
the software on some of these machines.

If I could take "Programs" and "Programs x86" move them to a mew SSD, mount it
on a new Windows 10 machine and be up and running in minutes I'd buy 30 brand
new machines tomorrow.

There have to be millions of machines out there that are not upgraded due to
the same issues. Microsoft, as I said, is at fault here.

~~~
toyg
"Gone are the days" that never were. Windows has always been painful to
upgrade. In fact, it's probably slightly easier to upgrade your average box
today, since apps reduced their reliance on system-provided libraries and MS
improved support for multi-version libraries on the same system. The Registry
is still a mess though, for obvious reasons.

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pmalynin
Yup, the only thing that I've been buying bi-annually is a new video card,
everything else works perfectly.

------
venomsnake
The new PC paradigm is pump it with ram and ssd while new - you are golden for
the next 5 years with video card upgrade in the middle.

PCs were made obsolete so fast during the late 90s and early 00s due to a
fluke that was because of leaps in production tech and killer apps/games.

~~~
pjmlp
Yep, they have finally become appliances.

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godzillabrennus
Windows 10 being free for old machines going back to Windows 7 units certainly
didn't help the industry in the short term.

As if that would have made a big enough difference, as I type this from mobile
device.

~~~
pen2l
Really? Which mobile device?

Because I simply _cannot_ get much mileage out of my iphone 6s, most certainly
I could not do my HN commenting (I can type ~80wpm on my laptop, and maybe
~10wpm on my phone). Plus, the screen is too small (I browse HN 200% zoomed in
on my 1080p res screen... zooming on small phone screens is a pain, but easy
to do on Google Chrome).

I feel like I'm missing something maybe. Other people are doing work on their
smartphones, I just can't.

~~~
aianus
I'm with you.

The mobile-only app trend (Tinder, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc.) drives
me insane -- I'm on my laptop 14h a day, I don't want to pull out my shitty
tiny mobile device when I have a perfectly good $2000 high-res, full-keyboard
machine already open.

~~~
pjmlp
Hence the new trend of having mobile phone docking stations.

In a couple of years, all laptops will be Surface like and all major mobile
OEMs will offer some kind of Continuum.

------
fffrad
Low sales means last years model is still performing pretty well. In fact, the
model from two years ago is still doing just fine.

Here is a post from two years ago where we discussed this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6606056)

------
hbcondo714
If VR picks up, then I would think PC sales would pick up too. To run oculus
rift, you need a high-end PC with dedicated graphics, 3 USB 3.0 ports and
more:

[https://www.oculus.com/en-us/oculus-ready-pcs/](https://www.oculus.com/en-
us/oculus-ready-pcs/)

------
Qantourisc
Personally waiting on AMD Zen ;) And some spare cash for SSD. Then again I
never buy a complete PC.

------
aladine
It is understandable. With the risen trend of phone and tablet. Even some
server can run on clould.

------
xbmcuser
PC sale are at historic high. The form factor for pc has changed to
smartphones and tablets

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chemmail
Sell computers, can confirm.

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michaelbuddy
this is obvious to everyone. PC sales were inflated for 2 decades anyway. Most
people never really needed one in their own home in the first place, it was a
luxury for so many. That and it's so easy to knock together a used PC that
will perform fantastically, that techies can drop their old gear onto their
family and they won't need to purchase anything yet again.

As long as people can internet, print, file taxes, write and open documents
from their PTO, that's all the vast population ever needed. iPads and other
Tablets do nearly all that and give people an easier library of utilities and
games to tool around with than they ever had on a PC. Not only that but the
phones and tablets hold and take the digital photos for people. People can
share faster than they ever could on a PC using their phone. They have access
to graphics software they never understood on a PC.

But PCs will continue to innovate. Especially the laptop form factor that can
dock with a high powered video card.

