PC Shipments Down in Q4 2013, Lenovo Gains Ground

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I don't even plan on upgrading mine for at least another year, and I used to have an annual upgrade cycle tied to my tax return. I got more than enough to outfit a whole new PC from my tax return, but I have no reason whatsoever to upgrade anything now. My Core i7 3930k and dual GTX680s are enough to last through another year, at least. None of the new hardware has any significant performance advantage over what I have, and none of the software I run even pushing my current system close to capacity. When Intel comes out with something significantly faster, I may consider an upgrade. Right now, the last 3 generations have had no significant increase in performance.
 

With Intel deciding to drop desktop and mobile product cycles to a two years schedule on alternating years because improvements on yearly releases are too small for most people to bother with anymore, you might end up waiting for a long time if all you are interested into is raw CPU performance.

The next 2-3 years should be interesting as far as seeing how much of a future is left for the traditional PC/laptop in normal people's everyday life is concerned.
 
As long as intel keeps their prices in the clouds and manufacturers continue to cut out components and raise prices I don't look to upgrade 2-3 yr old systems for a while.
 
PC shipment has been growing for over 30 years, it has reached a peak level and now has to undergo adjustment. This couple with weak performance upgrade and weak OS improvement has accelerated the adjustment. Smartphone and phablets affect this a bit, but these two markets will never kill off the other. PC cannot compete with the mobility of smartphones and phablets, while smartphones and phablets cannot compete with the performance and capacity of PC. To think smartphones can eliminate PC is to think smartphones can eliminate TV, or PC eliminating TV. Just the screen size alone make them different products for different needs. Some people will own multiple of such devices, while some may probably only need one of them. But the market of all of these will continue to exist.
 
My PC sales are massive for Q4. I made more money in the fourth than I did all year almost double and all the sales in November and December. On average the computers I sold were in the 2k USD range as well. But numbers a little “inflated” because I sold a few of the highest computers I have to offer. Most computers I sold were my AMD Athlon X4, ITX MB, 8 gig ram, 1tb 7200RPM HDD, and a R9 290.
 

Stagnation = no growth nor shrinkage.

PC sales have DROPPED by 1-13% depending on metric, market and market segment, which is technically worse than stagnation.

Also, even if Intel (and AMD) did make much faster CPUs, it still does not change the fact that 3-5 years old PCs are still adequate if not overkill for 80-90% of people so sales would still be regressing simply because an increasingly large chunk of the market does not need more processing power than it already has. The same thing will happen with mobile devices in 2-3 years when most of the functionality gap between SoC and desktop/laptop parts will be gone.
 

This is true only if most people still needed more processing power than what they can already fit in their pockets. Once phones and tablets are powerful enough to handle most people's everyday computing requirements (which is already the case for many) then it does not matter how much "better" PCs might be since the extra capabilities are unnecessary.

If I didn't need a PC for CAD, HDL, programming and PC-based games, I could do just about everything else from a tablet like the N7v2 with BT keyboard+mouse and external HDMI/DP display.
 
I generally had a three year upgrade cycle, for a complete new build, to coincide with the introduction of a new Microsoft operating system to immediately enjoy the new features and speed. During those three years I would probably change the graphics card once, up the memory to the max capacity when the price came down, and may even upgrade the processor once if my motherboard supported it. So it would happen soon after Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP, and finally Windows Vista. With the quad core processor available after vista, I noticed that it was fast enough and my graphics card was really making the difference in speed. Therefore, I have not upgraded my motherboard or CPU since Vista but have maxed out my memory and upgraded my graphics card twice. Next upgrade is likely to be as soon as Intel Skylake comes out with PCI Express 4.0 to take advantage of future graphics cards, SATA Express to take advantage of future SSD drives, DDR 4.0, and hopefully an Intel 8-core processor priced under $600.
 
If anything, PCs are requiring less power as more and more of the applications people use are web based and operating systems are becoming more lightweight. These things are just not becoming outdated. Lack of a need for additional resources combined with the relative stagnation (or regression) in operating system design means no reason to upgrade. Mobility is the only area where people seem to be buying, but tablets and Chromebooks seem to be most popular there. Most people aren't shelling out for the $1K+ ultrabooks because they just don't need them.
 


Except that apps designed for Android or iOS is targeted for touch based usage. HP has a 21.5" Android "desktop" selling for $399 and most people find it useless because of exactly that. It is not enough just to blow up the display into bigger area, the software has to designed for it. Traditional PC desktop applications pack a lot more info into the available display area because it is expected the display item will be large enough. All apps in the mobile devices assume the display area is small and hence if the same UI is projected to large screen, they simply looks too big to be functional. Think about trying to perform multiple select in "file manager" in Android or iOS, and how this is normally performed in desktop, that will be really awkward trying to replicate mobile UI into desktop environment.

And the heat, something so small as a mobile device cannot have the same mean to dissipate heat as a desktop. The form factor of these devices put a ceiling of what they can possibly do.
 


You're missing his point. The vast majority of people don't need traditional PC applications because all they do is browse the web, play games, and consume content. Yes Android and iOS have ceilings, but those are high enough where no one other than gamers and those who do work on a PC really need them. That's a lot smaller market than the everyone that needed them 5-10 years ago. Even the student market is shrinking because Chromebooks are a lot better for education and less expensive.

On top of all that, Microsoft is going in the opposite direction by trying to make Windows one size fits all. In trying to compete with the iPad, they are alienating what is left of their core market (those who work on a PC) by trying to force an unproductive touch UI on everyone with no option to turn it off.
 

That can and most likely will change as desktop, AIO and transformable Android devices become more common.

As for the heat, this nowhere near as much of a limitation to what can be done on Android as the lack of software and external connectivity are. Poor application design often accounts for a huge chunk of some applications' CPU usage too so more power may have some perverse effects there... Android games, particularly 2D ones, seem notoriously poorly optimized.
 


The current sales figure has not shown "vast majority of people" that use tablets are more than desktop users yet. Total shipment for tablets in 2013 is still less than the total shipments for PC in 2013. It is still too early to say there are definitely more people prefering tablets than using a PC.

As for mobile phones, PC sales figure has never been able to match the level of mobile phone sales figure. There are simply more phone users than PC users. This has not changed so I do not take mobile phone sales into consideration. Currently we are seeing a transition for phone users to switch from feature phones to smart phones and therefore the unit shipment for smartphone has surpassed PC shipment.

Chromebook should be classified as PC due to its form factor. Makers of Chromebook are mostly from traditional PC vendors.
 

Except Chromebooks do not run traditional Wintel applications which makes them as useful (or useless depending on which side of that fence you are standing) as Android-based devices for everyday computing. Most Chromebooks also use the same SoCs phones and tablets use with more or less exactly the same support hardware around them; just a bigger screen, battery and a keyboard attached. So if you consider Chromebooks as PCs, you pretty much have to also accept tablets and smartphones as PC equivalents, albeit with smaller screens and optional external keyboard instead of built-in. Most tablets and smartphones are built by PC OEMs too.

The PC is not a form factor; it is merely the idea of being able to carry computing out on a personal / private scale. The traditional PC has a few traditional form factors attached to it along with a mostly Wintel history.

As for total shipments, IDC numbers say 49 million tablets were sold during Q1-2013 and that it was a 140+% year-on-year growth. That puts tablets well ahead of the ~90 million PC sales for the whole year even if all three other quarters were only half as strong. With explosive growth like that while (traditional) PC sales are regressing, people's enthusiasm for mobile computing is pretty difficult to ignore.
 
They have to understand that PC market after few years of boom is saturated, and right now because of mobile devices it's actually shrinking. Buisiness <Mod Edit> think if they are not growing they are failing, this is just broken concept in it's core.
 
how much of a future is left for the traditional PC/laptop in normal people's everyday life is concerned.
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Personally I think there is a great future ahead for my higher performance desktop. I spend a lot of time at my desk reading news, conducting business and playing challenging games that are too demanding for most all but real expensive laptops. Don't confuse lack of demand for new desktops or even laptops with lack of usage of existing PCs. And not all of the market growth in purchases of mobility devices like tablets is deeper penetration, but rather replacement of cheap throwaway products that die because of mobility usage and are not worth the cost of repair. As an example, my wife is on her third Kindle tablet because the others died, not necessarily for feature enhancements. There is a significant market for upgrades to PCs for: cost rationalized better than 1080p and 27"+ displays and the graphic cards, CPUs. GPUs and programming to run them. And there is significant middle ground between 1080P and 4k to go half way. Also for game improvements to utilize these improvements.
 
I've bought my 3770K in 2012. Since I assembled the system, I've added another 8Gigs of Ram, a 3TB HDD, and the R9 290X. If everything continues to function, It might be another two years before I consider an upgrade
 
frankly I am getting sick of this desktop is dying crap. Tablets are PCs to me, they are motherboards, processors and RAM and tablets have been around for ages and ages it just took Apples marketing and sleek design to appeal to the masses. Also Another issue I have with this article is none of this factors in build your own PCs or computers compents etc etc cause ive seen some staggering numbers of people buying high end parts for PCs. Another thing is when most people buy a PCs they buy it to last, most PCs last a good 3-5 years easy while these stupid cheap throw away devices get replaced constantly cause consumers think they need something better or they just break cause they are cheap.
 

I'm quite certain those components sales are included in Intel's CPU sales and revenue figures. If Intel sells 4% fewer CPUs and earns 13% less revenue from those sales, it does mean that there are 4% fewer new Intel-based systems out there and that the average price on those sales is 8-9% lower, which implies more people are opting for lower-end chips than they did before.

People who buy high-end components still exist but the average buying price point and frequency for traditional PCs are dropping.
 


So what is your definition of PC market? Linux not included? Mac not included? It has to be only Windows + Intel/AMD? I am wondering whether the survey was looking at the PC shipments the same way? If Chromebook was not included then where was it categorized as? Mobile devices? The survey specifically mentioned phones and tablets as separate categories so we know they were not part of PC shipment units. Otherwise the survey result would have said "PC shipments" up compared to last year as the total number units definitely look better than last year. Reading the original report from IDC seems to imply Chromebook as "emerging product category" in the PC shipments.

If you look at this from the consumer point of view, I would think most people who look at a Chromebook with Acer logo on it, would have thought of that as a cheap notebook. Very few would have associate it as an "iPad". Chromebook does not even run the same app in Google Store as Android. It is like a new form of alternative platform in the same category of Linux, except now it runs apps from Chrome web store instead. I am also wondering what the consumers think of Surface RT. It looks like a tablet and yet also looks like a notebook. It uses Microsoft software but runs on ARMS SoC. I wonder what they were categorized in the survey. Was it a tablet or was it a PC?

And it is too early to assume the tablet sales will continue to grow just because last year has been growing. The problem with tablet is the same as the problem with PC. PC sales has been down because many people find their existing PC are already good enough. Looking at tablets and you can see the GHz seems to have reached its peak, mainstream CPU is now 4 core. Vendors now are trying to make their product look good by putting better display resolution and LTE on the tablets. And then what is next? No one has seem to able to reach i5 performance without generating lots of heat. Will the consumers still willing to spend that much? Personally I think 2014 will be a more cautious year for tablets compared to the past few years.
 


Looking at sales figures is something new to me; thanks for the information. (I think? This was meant for me, right?)
 
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