
The PC upgrade cycle slows to every five to six years, Intel's CEO says - walterbell
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3078078/hardware/the-pc-upgrade-cycle-slows-to-every-five-to-six-years-intels-ceo-says.html
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petewailes
What's interesting is if you extrapolate this out to the future. This would be
more accurately stated as "the hardware we were building five or six years ago
only needs updating now".

Now, there's obviously different needs that drive that, but what worries me is
what it means for the PCs built now.

It's entirely possible that we've seen the last full refresh of hardware we'll
ever see. It's not inconceivable to imagine that today's hardware will now
never be less than good enough, unless VR really explodes. And that's far from
a given.

If a PC five years ago lasted five years, it's quite possible one today might
go 10-15 years. At some point, the new box market is going to slow to such a
crawl, and be so commoditised that it's not worth anyone's time building new
ones at scale.

I suspect this is what we're starting to see in the mobile device world too as
part of the reason for the slowdown there. Everyone has a smartphone, and
mostly now they're good enough. Replacements will increasingly require either
massive jumps in some area (battery life most likely), or device
failures/damage.

