Ultra Thin Notebooks Climbing While Desktop Sales Decline; Tablets Slowing

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This is a sensible trend.
Someone who needs basic computing and accessibility can use a tablet or notebook to do so, so desktop sales go down, however if anything desktops themselves are increasing in number.
Its becoming more and more common to build your own desktop, which I doubt is considered a "sale"
 
I really don't know how this Gartner place stays in business. Every report I have ever read of theirs is either way out in left field or blatantly obvious. This is an obvious one. No kidding ultra small tablets are not selling people have their cell phones, and no kidding desktops are not selling because only power users need them and if they have any brains they will build their own workstation. So...... everything is converging in the middle where you have portability and also the power you need for average users. Who would have thought...
 
They are only make us thinking as they want. I mean sellers as they. I love my desktop pc and i love to change it as i want. So i don't think i'll love a laptop like my desktop :)
 
Portable laptops (or tablets) that easily double as your desktop, especially with a good Docking Station are a great idea.

People got Tablets but then realized they still wanted keyboards. Hence the tablets that added keyboards (uh, isn't that a laptop?). I guess if the keyboard is removable it's technically a tablet + keyboard..

Anyway, for non-gamers we finally have really light laptop/tablets with Windows 8.1 (desktop/Metro as desired) that can be both portable AND serve your desktop.
 
13.28 million units were sold during the quarter whereas 14.62 million units were sold in Q3 2013, which is down 19 percent.
Click to expand...
"19 percent"?! That seems huge. Something didn't seem right though.
I calculated the values and I only saw a drop of 9.166%! The "1" in "19" may be a typo but in my opinion it is one of the most misleading examples of errors. This should really not be allowed. :-(

Calculation: difference of old value and new value / old value; (14.62 - 13.28) / 14.62 = 0.09166
 
I don't believe the ultrabook comment. I'll believe that when I see it, as they are just far too overpriced compared to what you get in a loaded regular laptop. There are not that many pure road warriors out there that require this type of overpriced LIGHT laptop. Most of us are bang for buck and an extra pound or two means nothing. The price of awesome laptop perf can be had far below the ultrabook neighborhood. Intel's sales have sucked for a reason. PRICE/Value.

Tablets have slowed because we're waiting for 20nm that is right around the block. This close to something that important will put a lot of people off for purchases. I mean if you like K1's perf, at 20nm EVERY low-end chip will have that (of course the top will be M1 or whatever maxwell 20nm is named). Today low-end stuff can't play games at the ridiculous resolutions of most tablets (or even 1080p), but 20nm will allow pretty good gaming tablets from a lot of socs. A $200 unit will run like NV's shield today which is clearly a leader now. So why buy unless you absolutely have to for some reason? Wait 4-6 months and you'd likely double your gpu or more (bringing low-end to K1). On the cpu side they are all pretty close, but the gpu has huge differences from top to bottom. Now that users are keying more on gaming, they are aware the low stuff doesn't cut it. Since tablets are usually subsidized (unlike phones on contract) you spend a little time making sure you're buying a BETTER model. On contract people still seem to think that phone is free so not as picky, though it's stupid as that 2yrs apple contract costs you $1800-2400 ($75-100 month usually).

RE: lower pc sales, you have to realize they were selling 380mil worldwide, so a drop to 260 is a large haircut (mainly due to arm, 21% of notebooks when to chromebooks). Arm will steal more as 20nm, 64bit+androidL makes it into desktops (low stuff first) and more capable notebooks. I really don't understand Intel's stock price rise knowing this and the damage already done to notebooks and their profits (~13B 2011, ~11B 2012, $9.5B TTM, dropping yearly now). How do they think ultrabooks will increase massively when the world has proven they'll take good enough chromebooks instead and they haven't even made it into a 500w PC like box desktop yet. When ultrabooks don't also come with an ULTRA price, maybe they'll increase massively.

I wouldn't be surprised by 20% desktops being arm by next xmas (2015 xmas, not this year) as 20nm is all over IF someone puts them in two boxes. One with soc only and another with an NV discrete gpu for really good gaming. So I'm saying competition for the $300 dell/hp box on low-end and good competition for a $500-1000 PC (with your choice of Nv gpus in the whole range). What you save in the box comes at the expense of windows apps, which for many won't matter one bit as chromebooks show. They want to merely browse, email, consume vids/music and game. You don't need windows for any of these 5 things. NV will surely put out both with Denver and beyond, with NVlink replacing buses from Intel/AMD and PCIE (hypertransport & infiniband can be replaced with NVlink along with PCIE as NV has already noted with pascal talks). The whole point of unified memory is to share it with their own cpu and gpu. So your cpu/gpu will talk over NVlink with 3d stacked memory. That's going to be a competitive PC for the 4 tasks mentioned and can come with a tri-boot of 3 OS's that are free. Linux, SteamOS and AndroidL giving the user a TON of software already out there and more coming every day. SteamOS will be ported to ARM shortly either by NV or Valve or both working together. Nvidia's goal is to steal Intel cpus sales and keep selling you gpus on either side. You grow your revenue by putting YOUR cpus in boxes to replace Intel/AMD completely and do it with FREE operating systems. At the same time you kill DX/Wintel more and push OpenGL which devs will love due to portability speed. Intel has 20x the income of NV. They want some of it and will get it via a WINTEL-LESS pc. 😉

Also that cpu/nvlink/stacked memory combo will replace AMD/Intel in their top500/green500 supercomputers. NV will feed their gpus with their own cpus. Owning NV stock is a no-brainer, and I'm not even talking cars etc. They'll either explode on their own or be a takeover target by google/ms/Intel who could all afford the ~$23-25B tag (more? Market cap ~9.5B with all the patents maybe far more). MS makes that almost a year. Google 1/2 of it, so only 2yrs income to own great stuff for them (socs for all their devices to expand their power in cheap devices for longer, vertical integration just like apple/samsung/qcom, the more you can integrate on your own the better). MS can do the same now that they own Nokia it would be wise to buy NV. Not sure if Intel can get it done without making Jen Hsun CEO as he has stated he'd want. Too much hate for that between them and their engineers on both sides probably but definitely Intel's best move to stop losing $4B a year on mobile. Put out a 14nm K1 next year and you'll do some damage to Qcom's train from then on, alone keep losing 4B+ which at some point will piss off shareholders.
 
I think a lot of people are just using their cell phone or tablet as a computer instead of using a computer. So including smartphones should be part of the survey. Some people also use their tablets as phones using Skype also. This can blur the lines of what is a computer and what is a cell phone.
 
This isn't a new trend. The average consumer wants small, quick and easy. Why fire up a big, "clunky" desktop when they can turn on their tablet just to check Facebook? Desktops these days are for power users who do more then browse the web, and most of us build ours.
 
http://recode.net/2014/07/30/exclusive-interview-best-buy-ceo-says-tablet-sales-are-crashing-sees-hope-for-pcs/

I'm just asking for clarity here. Is it up or down? Not that it matters to Power Users any. We'll build ours the way we want to, regardless...
 
oops, above I mean tablets are NOT subsidized like phones...left that word out, but you get the idea from what I said anyway.

"Since tablets are NOT usually subsidized (unlike phones on contract)"

Just to be clear.

Voted down again for saying it like it is...LOL.
 
Portable laptops (or tablets) that easily double as your desktop, especially with a good Docking Station are a great idea.

People got Tablets but then realized they still wanted keyboards. Hence the tablets that added keyboards (uh, isn't that a laptop?). I guess if the keyboard is removable it's technically a tablet + keyboard..

Anyway, for non-gamers we finally have really light laptop/tablets with Windows 8.1 (desktop/Metro as desired) that can be both portable AND serve your desktop.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've mentioned before how useful it could be to have your whole personal computing world based on your smartphone. Make a large screen with physical keyboard laptop like device that uses your smart-phone as it's brains. You can get docking stations for smart-phones now, but there's still much improvement needed. Wireless video is what we need, that way you could link your smart-phone to use any monitor or flat-screen TV and wireless keyboard/mouse setup. Why have multiple puters with different hardware and Operating Systems and applications when you can have it all in one place? Sad to say I need a Windows desktop for certain must-have applications and video processing and Android is whiz poor when it comes to adding peripherals and devices and printer / scanner support.
 
Tablet sales are slowing mostly because specs at most price points have been stagnant for about two years now so even if people wanted to upgrade their tablets, they have relatively little worth upgrading to.

And then there is the "good enough" factor where people are starting not to bother looking for upgrades because their current model still does what they need them to do.
 


You vote down my post then basically say the same as I said here:

"Tablets have slowed because we're waiting for 20nm that is right around the block. This close to something that important will put a lot of people off for purchases. I mean if you like K1's perf, at 20nm EVERY low-end chip will have that (of course the top will be M1 or whatever maxwell 20nm is named). Today low-end stuff can't play games at the ridiculous resolutions of most tablets (or even 1080p), but 20nm will allow pretty good gaming tablets from a lot of socs."

Yeah, I agree stagnant, and further 20nm will make them worth upgrading again. Kind of my main point on tablet sales slowing. Sitting at 28nm hasn't changed a lot until K1 upped the gpu side, but for most they'll wait for 20nm as that will take a dump on K1 even and come with 64bit, AndroidL etc. Probably get gains in battery and perf, though they'll likely just up perf vs giving us the battery life or maybe a tad of battery but mostly perf. You vote my post down but don't argue the points, instead just repeat them...Hmmm. OK. Whatever...
 

My downvote was mostly about how you seem to systematically paint everything Nvidia does as the absolute holy grail for everything.
 


Didn't I just say 20nm will take a dump on K1? 😉 Further than even the low end next year will be K1 gpu levels. What is wrong with recognizing they're leading now and will until 20nm? They have more wins than 805 and 805 loses to K1 a LOT, so just stating the facts on this gen of socs. S810 won't change it as they've already announced expected perf via Qcom's own mouth and knowing it's late AFTER Denver K1 and off the shelf unlike K1 in house, I don't expect it to catch K1 or Denver.64 version.

I've also said the first 4 tegras were just test runs getting us to desktop gpu's in socs, and they were just learning and buying time until K1. I'm not calling the first 4 failures, but you couldn't claim they had class leading perf for anything but a short time in any case if at all. Not the case with K1 which pretty much wins everything right now.
 

I would wait to see real-world power consumption numbers before declaring that much of a win for Nvidia... people who have seen Nvidia's demos are quite worried about that - the demo prototypes had some pretty large heatsinks for "mobile" devices.

How many actual design wins did the K1 actually score so far? The Shield Tab is practically the only K1-based product with a fair amount of buzz about it.

On the 805 side, I can bet my shorts that just about every manufacturer with 800/801-based designs will refresh them with the 805 without much fanfare.

As far as 20nm goes, I would not count on that being some sort of magical equalizer since everyone except Intel and Samsung relies on GF/UMC/TSMC/etc. for chip fabbing and it looks like they are all going to get there at about the same time. Everyone who has been waiting for 20nm to become available will be doing their best to have their 20nm designs ready for when that happens. Whoever gets their first batch of 20nm wafers baked is not going to have that advantage for long.
 


http://www.anandtech.com/show/8329/revisiting-shield-tablet-gaming-ux-and-battery-life
Waited. Battery life worries over 😉 Today's games won't push the K1 to max which caused the shorter life in recent tests as anandtech shows here. If you lock it at 30fps which as they note still beats everyone else, it's pretty darn good battery life. Temps ok too, throttling averted. GFXbench battery life lost to shield handheld a little, but remember it has a 45% battery capacity advantage over the tablet (28.8whr for shield handheld vs. 19.75whr for tablet), AND most importantly even winning with that battery by ~18%, K1 beat it in fps by OVER DOUBLE (same for lg g pro 2 with S800). So massive battery advantage to T4, but K1 smoked it with over 2x perf. If it wasn't impressive before the anandtech article over worries you mention, it's truly awesome now as proved. Doubters just need to give this one up. It's over. Don't forget the tablet is pushing a massive screen compared to the huawei phone or the shield screen (both far smaller). So again, even more slanted to K1 when judging what they are pushing in screens here. Note the huawei perf was quadrupled and then some. Considering huawei perf, it's battery life is easily discounted. If they even tried to cut the NV perf in half (still being double perf) that battery wouldn't be winning for it right? Never mind the fact that they'd need to quadruple perf to catch NV here.

Uh, NV will have an advantage for quite a while. This race is over at least for tablets with K1 vs. 805. Next race will be over also, as Denver is IN HOUSE vs. off the shelf IP from ARM for Qcom, a true reversal of roles and won't be fixed for 6-9 months AFTER S810 hits and loses. Off the shelf will mean lesser perf and worse battery vs their old Krait in house tech. So it's NV's game for at least a year or more in at least tablets which should mean it wins the next two nexus tablets. They already got Nov's HTC nexus in the bag from google and they'll do the same next year as both hit 20nm for the next rev. Qcom will be too late to the IN HOUSE 20nm fix to follow S810 so NV will win that Next year Nov war also. Who knows what samsung etc will do, but if nexus starts stealing huge numbers of sales due to gaming samsung will be forced to use K1. Since NV will license the gpu IP (and the whole point of this was to win apple and hurt imagination), apple may see themselves going with at least NV's gpu also. You can't let others steal your gaming sales especially with that being the focus now for everyone.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/report-majority-of-mobile-app-downloads-are-games/0191695
90% of sales at googleplay are games. 76% at apple, 61% at amazon.
"All of which adds fuel to the claim that games continue to be the strongest moneymakers on mobile."

This is why apple just got a patent for gamepad controls on the back of a device. Even they get it now. It's about gaming now, not so much the modem with 2GB caps (less than a single 720p movie) in most parts and only 2 places with 10GB caps (HK/Singapore). Faster than 150mbps is pointless with caps like this. My cable modem is only hitting 50mbps now, so I'm sure modems won't rule again unless the caps are removed and there is ZERO chance of that for a long time as the phone co's just want to milk mobile users to death just like cable caps.

One more thing, NV has popped out silicon at Samsung ages ago in a test run, and as apple kicks up some stuff at TSMC, what do you think will be filling samsung fabs? 😉
http://www.brightsideofnews.com/2012/03/14/exclusive-nvidia-tapes-out-tegra-at-samsung-fab2c-ibm2c-globalfoundries-next/
March 2012. Tapeout. Nothing stopping Nvidia from pumping out some socs over there. I'm guessing the whole point of this collaboration was in preparation for apple taking some stuff to TSMC or even to their own fab they now own or the one they're building. If apple doesn't go TSMC, they will at least use their own fabs at some point. That is after all the point of buying or building them right? :) Samsung knows the apple socs are on a limited time-frame here and it's running out fast. The only thing that would cover the amount of silicon apple is using would be NV GPU's (5x+ the size of socs) and NV socs themselves. I'd guess SOCS first to test the waters then the huge GPUS next. Also important is the fact that Samsung and GF can produce the same chips easily at each others fabs after taking IBM's tech and running with it. So sourcing from samsung means you can easily ramp at GF if needed in a pinch with pretty much zero design time. They are interchangeable now.

http://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/4171/samsung-globalfoundries-form-14nm-alliance-to-fight-tsmc
""All the fabs are 100 percent synched. Customers can take a design to one foundry or another or both," SW Jeong, executive vice president for foundry at Samsung, told Electronics 360.

The advantage for a customer is that a common manufacturing process makes it easier to transfer a design to a second foundry if a first foundry should have supply constraints or if a natural disaster should strike a fab."

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2014/08/04/taiwan-semi-to-lose-apple-qualcomm-biz-to-samsung-global-say-bernstein-bluefin/
TSMC losing favor anyway it seems in 2015. At the very least there shouldn't be as many shortage problems running around next year for gpus or socs I'd guess.

Jetson TK1 development board, Lenovo ThinkVision 28, XiaoMi MiPad, HTC Nexus 9, Nvidia Shield Tablet, project Tango already selling from Google also (likely come with Denver later this year as an upgrade to 64bit also). Denver has Acer Chromebook CB5 on tap supposedly this year too. Since it's been benchmarked already, I'm sure it will be on time. My guess is a shield handheld rev2 is coming either shortly as they ramp up K1 or in Nov/Dec for xmas refresh at worst with Denver inside. If Google can get a Nov nexus out the door, shield R2 will be there too. It takes far less design to plop a K1 into your already done Shield platform than to make a new tablet switching socs for google. Clearly power is ok so shouldn't be much work changing socs for NV in shield handheld. The 1440x810 specs and 4GB of ram rumor shows it's not the tablet we see today and must be a slight upgrade to the specs of the shield handheld which makes sense. I'm sure the K1 version would far outsell the T4 version right? It's the top soc for quite a while now. Priced at $250 vita/3ds sales would stop in their tracks and even $300 is doable based on the power vs these two. You won't be running unreal 4 engine games on a vita/3ds at any point in time right? :)

Should I vote you down like you did my post for being an NV pessimist repeatedly on toms?...LOL. More NV fud from you 😉 As usual. It would be different if my enthusiasm was unfounded, or their quarterly reports sucked like Amd etc, but that isn't the case. Did you catch their quarterly report? Very nice, tegra sales up 200% no doubt due to K1 designs coming and it hasn't even ramped, also took over google I/O (auto, tv, tablet, everything they had was K1 there). Margins 56%, profits fine etc. Guiding higher, thus stock price higher too now (up 9% from the quarter is pretty great correct?). Google showing they want AEP and AndroidL to be gaming centric and to close the gap on PC's shows they'll be leaning on NV as their IO show demonstrated. You'll go with the graphic leader from here on out for gaming, not Qcom who has ZERO game experience with devs or drivers (you can google the driver hate for them). NV/AMD have been working with devs for 20yrs and optimizing their drivers for games for the same length of time. Good luck to qcom now.
 

The Shield Tab's 5.2AH battery beats the Note 3 with a 3.2AH battery on battery life tests, that is quite underwhelming: 60% larger battery to achieve 10% better battery life.

While games may be the biggest sellers, how much actual play time does that translate to? And how many of those games are actually 3D? And even among 3D games, how many are anywhere near complex enough to require the K1? Most virally popular games are either 2D (ex.: Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, Cut-the-Rope) or incredibly simple 3D affairs. (Ex: Temple Run)

I have 20+ games on my N7 but I use it to read web pages, PDFs, emails, Skype, Youtube, media playback, etc. ~95% of the time. The last time I "played" a game on it was a week ago when I was trying to show my 18 months old nephew how to play air hockey.
 


It has a 5.7in screen with lower res at 1080p, vs. shield at 8in 1920x1200. Last time I checked 5.3hrs is 35% longer life than 3.9hrs not 10% you claimed, and K1 did it while MORE than doubling the gpu power as shown since it has the same exact chip that is in the LG G Pro 2. S800. You don't expect a larger screen, higher res, and more gpu power to take more power? I'm guessing if they dropped the battery down to the same 3200whr from NV's 5197whr they'd still be doubling them while matching battery life instead of beating them by 35%, and that would still be with the LARGER screen on top. I don't understand how you can't see the math here and the screens affecting the situation. IE, grow that Note 3 screen a few inches to 8in and $20 says NV's lead grows to 60% matching the battery difference (already close at 35% longer life) you're citing...LOL. And K1 will still be well over 2x faster. You're acting like cutting over 2 inches off the screen doesn't matter. As anandtech points out it DOES matter as they noted vs. the shield handheld which is 5in.
From the article linked above:
"By capping T-Rex to 30 FPS, the SHIELD Tablet actually comes quite close to the battery life delivered by SHIELD Portable with significantly more performance. The SHIELD Portable also needed a larger 28.8 WHr battery and a smaller, lower power 5" display in order to achieve its extra runtime. It's clear that the new Kepler GPU architecture, improved CPU, and 28HPm process are enabling much better experiences compared to what we see on SHIELD Portable with Tegra 4"

More fud and some funny math with it.
 
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