Intel Trims 11 Percent Of Workforce As Desktop PC Market Nosedives

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Intel serves as the cornerstone of the PC market, and its adjustment raises the alarm that the declining PC market will likely never recover.
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I don't know where the optimism of any chance of recovery comes from: nearly everyone who wants or needs a PC already has one and at the snail's pace PC performance has been improving in more recent years, replacement cycles are getting three or four times longer than they used to be for the bulk of systems out there.

Unless there is a paradigm shift in how a large chunk of the PC market uses PCs, this can only get worse in the future.
 
This is such BS. Intel basically has the price command structure for PC's already and is making very good profit but decided to cut its workforce anyways. Intel's management seems to be on the cut and run attitude in terms of getting to other market segments. Microsoft had managed to reach beyond its OS business like xboxes and its cloud business, so why can't Intel?
 
"To say the PC market is withering on the vine is an understatement;"

Partially, I think that's because Intel is a victim of its own success. My 2015 Skylake I5 had a 2 frame per second improvement over what my 2011 Sandy Bridge did. That's inconsequential, and I could have happily have continued with my I5-2500K and not bothered to upgrade.
 


Intel does. In fact they have a hand in the majority of PC technology. That "Lightning" cable/port Apple uses? That is Intels Thunderbolt. Apple just adopted it first. Those Crucial SSDs? They use Intel/Micron NAND developed by Intel. Most DRAM specs are set with Intels influence.

The problem is that the client market is still big. I think this article is overstating how much they rely on it when their server CPUs command a much higher price and have much higher margins than their desktop counterparts but it is still important.

They are trying to push into the UMD market but it is not that easy. It is the same as say Google trying to push into the desktop market against Microsoft. It can be done but will be very hard since people are adverse to change.
 
Partially, I think that's because Intel is a victim of its own success. My 2015 Skylake I5 had a 2 frame per second improvement over what my 2011 Sandy Bridge did. That's inconsequential, and I could have happily have continued with my I5-2500K and not bothered to upgrade.
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I think part of this falls on software as well. There is nothing to PUSH the need for "more." What does it say when a dual core from a few years ago can still run the majority of applications?
 
I love it when companies blame the tablets' market instead of blaming themselves for not coming up with innovative products. The PC market stagnated for the last few years because there is no real evolution in terms of products offer and no real significant technological changes (4th and 5th and 6th GEN CPU for example). Besides the global recession never really recovered so that adds up to the stark global situation in other fields. The recession in China also crippled many companies inside the global village: a lack of sales in China will unfortunately eliminate jobs in the USA and other parts of the world.
 
"To say the PC market is withering on the vine is an understatement;"

Partially, I think that's because Intel is a victim of its own success. My 2015 Skylake I5 had a 2 frame per second improvement over what my 2011 Sandy Bridge did. That's inconsequential, and I could have happily have continued with my I5-2500K and not bothered to upgrade.
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This year alone i upgraded to 5 new computers: I chose only 2 skylakes (the 6700 and the 6700K), and decided to go with 2 Core I5 and 1 Core I3 with X99 chipset instead and DDR-3 memory support. Besides hardware features, there was also a lack of supported hardware back then with my OS X system, this is why i chose the 4970K over the 6700K, and at this time there was also no skylake support for my ESXI 6.0 hosts (the support has been added since). It is very important to get the software refresh with hardware at the same exact time
 
Hm, maybe someone here will know...has anyone ever tried to come up with an estimate of how many new PCs are being built yearly? Don't the statistics just measure how many prebuilt systems are being shipped?

I know it would be difficult to get a really accurate count, since it's hard to say whether a given component is going into a new build or upgrading an old one. But surely some clever statistician somewhere has tipped to the fact that assembling a PC is much easier than it used to be, and that this is going to affect the sales numbers for major PC manufacturers, but also have an impact on the total number of new PCs actually coming online each year?
 
Layoffs have nothing to do with the shrinking market or bad numbers, it has to do with more automation eliminating most jobs or consolidating them, Intel will continue to dominate with higher sales and lower expenses which = higher profits, this is what the share holders want.
 
It all to blame Microsoft who didn't come with anything innovative since Windows 8 release. People absolutely hate Windows 8.x and Windows 10.
 
I think there is just a tech change that we are experiencing in every area. Home PC's got eaten up by laptops mostly but laptops are limited and as the IoT era begins I think Home PC-like devices, which service the homes entire network will begin to pick up more steam. Intel also should focus on the smartphone market to boost margins. I know putting a laptop CPU into a cell phone isn't an exact fit but I think many companies would love the structure Intel has, especially when crossing over into the cloud space. For gamers I'm not sure. I want to believe games will still be made for PC's and not only consoles while at the same time wondering why Sony and Microsoft put out two basically identical consoles at the same time. Nintendo to me will be the ultimate winner in the console wars long term. A lot of us grew up with SNES and N64's if not NES and nostalgia is a big part of entertainment. To date I traded in both my PS3 and XBox 360 years ago to buy a very good Wii U deal (32Gb black version for $120). For my other games that aren't linked to Mario, Link and the gang I use my PC and hope that developers see that as a viable option in years to come. I don't know if I am the average consumer however. I own a Wii U so I can play games with the wife and kids and I have my media center PC with SLI NVIDIA GPU's for gaming while also using that PC to use Office 2016 and browse the web. However when I tire of sitting at the desk I grab my iPad mini 3 and use that for web browsing. My phone (iPhone SE 64Gb) is the best new item I have bought as it packs a lot of power and features into the last Steve Jobs designed iPhone and I like the smaller size. I plan to keep that for at least 3-5 years on a pre-paid Verizon plan for $48/mo incl. fees and taxes. This year I hope 4K UHD TV's come down in price so I can scoop a 70" Samsung Curved SUHD model and also pick up a NVIDIA Shield to stream games from my PC and play Android games (mostly the kids will) but also has HDMI 2.0 so I can get 60fps gaming at the higher resolution. When the Intel Core i7-4000 series came out instead of dropping $389 on a new one at Microcenter I scooped up a i7-3770k, watercooled it, overclocked it to 4.5ghz and haven't a single problem. I also store a lot of videos and pictures as well as music on my PC as evidenced my my two RAID1 arrays and use SATA III SSD's for my OS and another for my games. So for me this is the perfect balance of need/want/price. I don't need anything else. I don't need a laptop, I can use my tablet if I need to bring a PC-like functionality with me somewhere as well as my iPhone being very capable. Intel has the desktop and laptop market wrapped up as AMD just can't bring a comparable CPU at the same or lower price. This completes my needs for now and the foreseeable future. We may see consoles become more PC like and who knows where those companies will throw there money. If it were up to me I would say screw the consoles, have a decent desktop, if you want to game buy a video card and you can stream it to your living room or build a HTPC and wire it directly. For "cord-cutters" I see a future where this will become a possibility and developers of games can focus on making good games without glitches for three or four platforms and make it just run on a Windows Kernel. Sony and Microsoft should back development of games that they get a good return on and end the console war. The Wii U offers something completely different and with VR on the horizon what is going to give it the power to do so? In my opinion I think instead of a Hololens having a CPU and heavy battery with heat and weight issues that could easily be streamed via a network run thru a Desktop Home PC with Intel as the odds-on favorite. Intel rules the home. They may be able to break into the tablet and smart phone market but that is to be seen. But I think the entire thing will depend on how media is consumed and how best to develop products that are efficient, uncomplicated and unified. Intel could do this with Windows or Apple or any Android using device. NVIDIA could also (K1/X1.) So we know not where we are headed but we have a decent idea in my view. More powerful tablets and smart phones and a home network based on a powerful but efficient system capable of running many devices throughout the home. No one really knows. But if they are pulling in that kind of money and own 99% of the server/cloud market than they should focus on infrastructure both in the cloud and at home and maybe on the go. Time will tell but I am very excited to see what my home-build PC will do on my 4K NVIDIA Shield. Consoles are just becoming closer to PC's so why have them both, just have one and focus on content. Lower production costs and overhead and negative press when you can only push 900p games out when 4K is becoming the new standard. That's what I gotta say about dat.
 


Agree. It's funny when you hear non-techy people say, "Technology moves so fast!" No, it was moving fast in the 90s, and the 00s, but it's just moving like a snail now.
 


Let's not forget the ATX specification.
 
Intel's got to realize that the PC as we know it is going to go away soon (as in probably 10 years). Laptops are getting incredibly powerful, and once laptops get as much power as desktops AND have same prices as prebuilts, then PCs will go down like crazy in sales.

Even enthusiasts like me who love overclocking and PCs will eventually go to laptops most likely (not everybody but most). This is especially true since we already have overclocking capable gaming laptops.
 


There's no way I'm using a track pad for the rest of my life :lol: and using a mouse with a laptop is just weird. I don't think at all in 10 years this will happen. I still expect there to be a desktop market with monitors and all.
 
Intel serves as the cornerstone of the PC market, and its adjustment raises the alarm that the declining PC market will likely never recover.
Click to expand...
I don't know where the optimism of any chance of recovery comes from: nearly everyone who wants or needs a PC already has one and at the snail's pace PC performance has been improving in more recent years, replacement cycles are getting three or four times longer than they used to be for the bulk of systems out there.

Unless there is a paradigm shift in how a large chunk of the PC market uses PCs, this can only get worse in the future.
Click to expand...

This is exactly why I still use my five and change year old PC. It isn't the fastest, but I can't justify the upgrade cost because the performance just isn't there. It feels like we're caught in some kind of terrible fate where an "upgrade" is 5% better, but only in artificial benchmarks. Most uses see no real improvement.
 
It has become to be VERY difficult to increase clock speed and efficiency on cpus. with programs currently their is very little chance in preformacne because of this. as soon as programs can utilize 20+ threads efficiently intel will have no issues improving on their cpus as they have already shown they can relatively easily increase core count as the proved with their new 22 core xeons.
 


Well, there will still definantly be desktops, but there will be very few of them.

With a laptop and mouse it isn't bad at all. Plus, most will probably plug the laptops into a dock when they get home.
 

10 years from now, I suspect most PCs and laptops will be 3-in-1 x86 tablets with laptop and desktop docks. Only the more hardcore PC users will still use conventional laptops and desktop PCs.
 
Kind of funny due to its Intel's fault the PC Market is slowed down. They keep cranking out dual and quads that no one would see any value in replacing 6 year old cpu's. Look at the Xeon with near 3~4 times the cores. Think if Intel had $100 6 cores, $200 8 cores, $500 10 cores, and topping out with $1000 12 cores. That would still leave them 14,16. and 18 plus. Hell take it up to 22 cores when v4 broadwell releases. People only upgrade when the CPU isn't up to par so the market is totally in Intel's hands. I'm thinking about upgrading when Intel release the 6800K 6 core in the next 2 months.
At any rate the duals and quad cores should have their prices slashed due to not fully supporting DX 12's 6 physical cores limit.
 

Before you blame Intel for that, ask yourself why Intel isn't launching mainstream CPUs with more cores. How much mainstream software makes meaningful and efficient use of more than two cores? There is almost none. Most people would see very little to no gain from upgrading to a CPU with more than four cores.

Desktop performance is stagnating because the software required to justify more cores is nearly nonexistent. Most software developers are choosing to limit their software's capabilities to what they can do with one or two threads instead of going through the additional trouble of re-writing their algorithms to scale efficiently to 4+ threads.
 
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