The PC market has seen its first growth quarter in six years, according to research firm Gartner. The streak is over: Gartner found PC shipments were up globally in Q2 2018, the first quarter of year-over-year global PC shipment growth since the first quarter of 2012.
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. Lenovo in particular saw big gains (its highest growth rate since the first quarter of 2015), although that’s largely due in part to the inclusion of units from its joint venture with Fujitsu.
The economic crisis is over, and people and companies are buying PCs again.
I had complained these last seven years about the lack of evolution of RAM memory and high prices of HDD drives. Maybe with more demand the prices will drop a little bit.
Is there hope for PC/Keyboard/mouse lovers?
Edited 2018-07-14 00:56 UTC
More demand doesn’t imply lower price, in general.
I think it’s even the opposite, in conventional economics anyway.
Demand that outstrips supply generally raises prices. Oversupply is what lowers prices.
Maybe people are starting to figure out that you just can’t work very effectively on a tablet versus an actual computer with a keyboard and pointing device.
I like tablets for play as much as the next person, but I’ve yet to work a document or spreadsheet effectively on one. I’ve yet to code in python effectively on one.
The closest I’ve come to being reasonably productive on a tablet is when I’ve connected a bluetooth keyboard, but then we’re sorta back where we started, no?
Even that can be an overstatement, depending on what you’re doing on them.
It’s pretty much a break-even at best, for me, with it not really mattering whether I play LYNE on Android or Linux.
For other entertainment, I still prefer other devices.
For example, for Punch Quest, I find myself wishing that it would run on my OpenPandora palmtop so that I could rest my thumbs on physical buttons rather than hovering them over a touchscreen with no tactile feedback.
For eBooks, if you ignore resolution or colour vs. B&W as factors in the decision, I prefer my OpenPandora or my Sony PRS-505 eReader over a phone, tablet, or my brother’s Kobo eReader because I like to turn the pages using physical buttons that don’t require my fingers to momentarily impinge on the screen and add to the ever-developing smudge in the corner.
Hi,
I’m not convinced that the “people switching from PC to smartphone/tablet” theory was ever true.
For a while smartphone/tablet sales were increasing (because nobody had them before) and for a while PC sales were decreasing (because there’s been a lot less incentive to upgrade older computers since Nehalem); so there was a correlation between these sales figures but that doesn’t mean there was ever causation.
– Brendan
> I’m not convinced that the “people switching from PC to smartphone/tablet” theory was ever true.
It’s true enough to pour water on PC sales in a time of stagnant processor improvements. I know several people who do a solid 90% of their screen time on mobile/embedded, using a PC only for productive work (writing, doing taxes, etc.) or high end gaming. If you don’t game on a PC and all you really need is enough power to drive a browser, a monitor, a keyboard/mouse, and an office suite, an RPi3 is enough, let alone any PC from the past decade.
The transition did happen but the extent of this transition was grossly overestimated. Mobile devices replaced PCs only where the usage was mostly limited to simple content consumption – a niche actually. The stagnation of PC sales can be attributed to the stagnation of the progress in hardware. During the 1990s a 2-3 years old PC was a crap, struggling to run the current software. Nowadays, my 8.5 years old PC (with the original Nehalem i7) is still alive and kicking after only minor component upgrades (RAM 4 -> 16 GB, SSDs, GPU, 4K display). Even relatively new games are playable on this nearly a decade old machine. There has been no need to buy a completely new machine.
Edited 2018-07-15 18:36 UTC
After reading the other comments, I think it’s a combination of factors that has slowed the shipment of PCs for the last decade:
1st:
To most consumers, they just want a somewhat simple access to services like email, browser and all infotainment given by services that use specialized apps (read “social networks and video”). The rise of the smartphone and its sibling, the tablet, and their fast evolution in terms of computing power means that consumers don’t have to spend time in front of a PC to consume infotainment, they can do it on a device they can hold in their hands. Modern “smart” mobile devices have been able to cope with demand (like HD video) for the last 3 to 4 years. That’s why even mobile devices sales are slowing.
2nd
Even in markets that clearly need PCs, like enterprises, there isn’t a real need to replace client PCs so fast. The processors and RAM available for the last 10 years have such capacity that office tasks run fairly well in a almost 10 year old PC. Example, a Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0GHz) with 4GB of DDR2 RAM (sold in 2008) still runs fairly well everything you can throw at it with the exception of games, specially if you upgrade it with SSD storage.
There was even a revival of centralized computing with easier management in sight, which means even less client PCs. Specialized demand like video production, 3D CAD and HPC need newer equipments almost as fast they are conceived, of course.
Also, PC operating systems have reached a point they aren’t much more demanding (except in storage capacity) than they were 8 to 10 years ago.
3rd
The fad that was replacing PCs with tablets. That was one that never convinced me the slightest. Touch interfaces are awkward for, well, energic and efficient work, despite the rapid evolution of mobile processing power and touchscreens technologies. Nothing can replace the speed and accuracy of a optical mouse, not yet at least.
Only now we are finally realizing we still need PCs, and we will for long time still.
Let’s not forget there is a whole bunch of new interfaces were are adding, in big part because we have the hardware now readily available.
Virtual Reality: which favors the PC ? Because of the GPU power. But then again Google Cardboard does not fit the PC. 😉
Augmented Reality: which favors mobile devices with built in camera’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lY4qaVvR8c
Brain / computing interfaces: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/brain-controlled-gadgets/
Operating/working with robots ?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4TU2s1lQy8
Seems to me speech recognition is currently making the biggest inroads:
Voice Control/speech recognition: even created a sort of new class of devices: Google Home and Amazon Echo or have been added to an old device class: Smart TV
Direct near real time speech to speech translation ?
And Google Duplex:
http://www.osnews.com/story/30527/Talking_to_Duplex_Google_s_phone_…
All of the interfaces you listed have existed for 10 years and although they have seen development the last few years they are far, far from mainstream. It also seems that adoption is slowing instead of picking up speed. This is normally a sign that there is no market (yet) for these technologies
I also see no sign of pick-up of voice control on pc’s, although Cortana received a couple of big pushes with Windows 10.
Like you said, dedicated voice controlled devices (home-speakers) seem to be the only place these new interfaces are really picking up adoption
What I think is: the others (not voice) are being adopted in niche markets now. 10 years ago, much less.
And it’s all because of cheaper or more capable hardware.
Same goes with voice recognition because of machine learning getting a lot better in large part because of cheaper and more capable hardware.
Al though, yes a lot of does feel like ‘300% increase in use !’ from 10 users to 30. 😉
I also think that these interfaces are not appropriate for most “shared” environments. When I am alone in the car I might use the voice assistant, but when there is somebody else I just type to the assistant.
I have never seen a AR/VR device in a real persons house, but I read/hear about them in the news every week. I can imagine playing with them alone in your room, but not with other people around
Voice-assistants for home-speakers seem to be the exception. You are going to hear audio anyway, so it is okay to talk to your computer.
The moment I would start to talk to my computer at work I would have 10 co-workers and a mental health professional around my desk
. A VR/AR/Mind-headset would be the equivalent of forgetting to put on clothes
Most PCs sold are laptops with Intel integrated graphics; on average, consoles are a more powerful target.
Prediction noted.
The PC\laptop isn’t going anywhere.
No, companies are starting their migrations to Windows 10 and although that often works on the same hardware as Windows 7 they will replace more hardware than previous