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Hardware

Reports of the PC's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, Says IDC (theregister.com) 70

Posted by msmash from the reality-check dept.
The PC market is expected to return to growth in 2024, according to estimates from IDC analysts. From a report: Still, industry players might want to taper their enthusiasm. PC shipments are forecast to grow 3.7 percent year-on-year to hit 261.4 million units in 2024, putting them above 2018 levels, but not quite on par with 2019 demand. Meanwhile, 2023 is predicted to sink by 13.7 percent to 252 million units. Research manager Jitesh Ubrani called demand "tepid at best" and said 2023 will be the year with the "greatest annual decline in consumer PC shipments since the category's inception."

IDC recognizes the market still faces challenges including "concerns around the consumer market refresh cycle, businesses pushing device purchases forward, and education budgets that are not rebounding in many markets." Market hesitancy, as always, boils down to uncertainty. For one, processors are seeing what IDC called "some of the biggest shifts in commercial PC history" as AMD market share hit 11 percent in 2022 and Apple pulled in just over 5 percent that year. Apple device sales have been on a decline for multiple quarters now. Q1 2023 saw new Macs plummet more than 40 percent year-on-year, compared to an overall 25-30 percent among PC vendors. The quarter before that saw Apple shipments outperform the PC market as a whole, declining a mere 2.1 percent while other manufacturers experienced 37 percent reductions.
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Reports of the PC's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, Says IDC More

Reports of the PC's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated, Says IDC

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  • I thought... (Score:3)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @05:33PM (#63807108)

    that the biggest year for PC sales in recent times would be 2020-2021 as people bought PC's to work from home during the pandemic.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Halueth ( 776646 )
      Office work is not the majority of people. You can't work from home in a factory or restaurant. and when your company is closed, you're not earning money to replace these things.

    • that the biggest year for PC sales in recent times would be 2020-2021 as people bought PC's to work from home during the pandemic.

      Perhaps we should first find out of the ones slinging PC statistics have redefined what a "PC" is, in order to figure out how much hype and bullshit is behind this potential clickbait of an article.

      Ain't life grand when Narcissism becomes a legitimate career choice...

      • Yeah. Is Microsoft Surface a PC, while Apple iPad (with keyboard) Not a PC? I think that's how they count.

        "While AI-capable PCs are not ready today, they are coming and have shifted some of the discussion around device purchasing within businesses," said IDC. The M2 contains dedicated neural network hardware in a 16-core Neural Engine capable of executing 15.8 trillion operations per second. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] I guess these don't count in IDC's view. The GPU cores in the M-series ch

        • The person controls the computing (Score:4, Informative)

          by tepples ( 727027 ) <tepples.gmail@com> on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @07:31PM (#63807344) Homepage Journal

          Yeah. Is Microsoft Surface a PC, while Apple iPad (with keyboard) Not a PC? I think that's how they count.

          Surface Pro is (in theory) end-user programmable, whereas iPad is not. The key difference between the two is that the person who owns a Surface Pro, not the app store gatekeeper, controls what computing is done (at least in userspace). Person, computing. Personal computer. PC.

          (The less that can be said about Surface RT, the better.)

          • Yeah. Is Microsoft Surface a PC, while Apple iPad (with keyboard) Not a PC? I think that's how they count.

            Surface Pro is (in theory) end-user programmable, whereas iPad is not. The key difference between the two is that the person who owns a Surface Pro, not the app store gatekeeper, controls what computing is done (at least in userspace). Person, computing. Personal computer. PC.

            While this sounds like a completely logical stance, I'm still waiting for the "official" definition of PC that media has been sold in order to brainwash the targeted consumer masses. Needless to say marketing like this doesn't help the computer revival no matter how personal you make it.

            https://youtu.be/3S5BLs51yDQ?t... [youtu.be]

  • Get off my lawn (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @05:52PM (#63807146)
    I really dislike touch interfaces, so given a choice I go back to using laptop or desktop with a mouse and keyboard. So yes, I am one of the people who still buys (well, builds in most cases) PCs.
  • PC are still there, but we waste less resources on PC. That looks like a good news?
    • More like bad news. PCs are essentially a test-bed for new features / hardware because they have the real estate (dedicated physical space) and the resources (dedicated power main / person to implement and fix them) to make them work regardless of refinement. That means things like VR / AR, AI / LLMs, Depth Cameras, or even entire ISAs like RISC-V, even if it's on shaky ground purpose-wise, has room to work the bugs out and possibly grow into a viable product.

      Things like iPADs, Phones, or gaming consoles

      • When PCs start slumping off, expect stagnation in the mobile / gaming spaces for a few years.

        I can live with that!

  • That is what the guarantee period is, after which my company allows you to order a new laptop. Independent from the status of the old laptop. There is no incentive not to honor this three year cycle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Most companies in the current trend can only allow a tiny handful of employees to have such privileges. Most are managed by IT, who have a very limited budget for new laptops.

      • Re:Three year cycle (Score:4, Informative)

        by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @07:28PM (#63807334)

        Most companies in the current trend can only allow a tiny handful of employees to have such privileges. Most are managed by IT, who have a very limited budget for new laptops.

        Most employees don't need a computer that is computationally powerful. A 3 year old machine is probably still overpowered relative to their needs.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          For most office workers, even 10 year old machine works just fine. 2500k/2600k grade machine is still perfectly fine in terms of office software performance.

          There's a tiny sliver of people in the office who actually need compute. People who work in IT and compile code as well as people who edit video come to mind. Word and excel jockeys of whom there's probably a 100 for every one of aforementioned people if not more?

          They probably won't even notice the difference.

        • I do agree with your comment, newer laptops do not make you any more productive. Many users run only MS Office software and VNC viewer. Number crunching is done on a computer farm that runs Linux.

          The point is, large companies have this odd computer refresh cycle. You get a new laptop after warranty period is over.

    • That is what the guarantee period is, after which my company allows you to order a new laptop. Independent from the status of the old laptop. There is no incentive not to honor this three year cycle.

      I'd say there is a disincentive to honor it. A three year old PC works just fine.

      Once upon a time you get a new PC after three years and you can see the performance improvement, no stop watch necessary, it was visibly faster.

      This is no longer the case. Getting 7 years out of a PC is usually not a problem. Get a RAM upgrade when you buy a PC and 7+ years later you may have a hard finding a significant performance gap. Into gaming, updgrade the GPU ever two or three years.

      I got a 10 year old PC with

      • Hardware/Silicon is on x10 or x20 the pace of printing paper in development. We have gotten to it being a billion dollar industry but most computer is assuming the role of toilet paper (basic need). What is done with the product is much more amazing than the product.

        I used a 1982 Apple IIe , that was mostly a 1977 design well into 1992. That system had been the primary FIFO inventory value system for a family bossiness for 8+ years, and I wrote all school work on it since about 1980 The impact

  • Pluton / TPS2 / Intel ME (Score:3)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @06:29PM (#63807226) Homepage
    If it was not for Pluton, TPS2, Intel ME and Secure Boot I would be in the market. But for me, it is Old Systems for the win until something better and open comes along.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      Linux on desktop is honestly close to being on par with windows XP in terms of user friendliness on desktop. Not quite there yet, but close. If you're into really old systems, may want to consider switching to that.

      It gives you control over most of those things, minus the management engine aspect, which is unlikely to ever go away as it's getting more and more entrenched due to increasing complexity of processors and processes needed to start them.

    • If you build your own and run Linux, none of that is really a big deal. I just built a system for $950 and am very happy with it. The motherboard has room for future expansion and upgrades whenever I get to that point of needing them. Not sure I'll need more then 32gb of ram but I could see upgrading my RTX 4060 in the eventual future though that card should easily last 5 years.
      I could also see maybe buying an additional storage drive, as I only have 1TB NVME but even that seems highly unlikely since even m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's the lack of good laptop options that is making me reconsider getting another desktop. I wanted a single machine I could use as a travel laptop and desktop replacement, but the only one that meets all the requirements is the Framework 16, and they aren't shipping yet.

      So instead I might get an old, cheap Thinkpad for travelling, and a compact ITX or mATX desktop. Or maybe just stop travelling with a laptop entirely. I think I can get by with just a smartphone.

  • Reports of PC death? (Score:4, Informative)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday August 29, 2023 @06:49PM (#63807264)

    I think I stopped listening 20 years ago or so. They were always ridiculous nonsense. Essentially, some "journalist" desperately looking for something to write.

  • I think one of the issues that the PC industry faces is the quality of the PCs produced in the last 10 or 15 years. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro and I have had few minor repairs totaling a few hundred bucks. At some point the Intel processor will render the unit obsolete. I suspect that the PC has another five years of life, maybe more. I also suspect that their are many more PC owners with the same circumstances. Why replace a perfectly functioning PC with a new PC? PC manufacturers need to produce new PCs wi

    • Why, just to run Windows 10 or 11? A 2nd to 6th gen i7 with plenty of RAM and an SSD is more than enough to run any flavor of Linux effortlessly. I don't upgrade simply because I no longer follow the Windows trail. When PC manufacturers (and programmers, games especially) finally figure out that truly supporting Linux is in their best interest you'll see new PC sales start to pick up again.

    • Maybe MacBooks age faster than Windows PCs. I have a 7th gen i7 Windows PC (2017), it works just fine with the latest version of Windows 11. It cost me only $1,100 new. I've never had to replace anything on it or repair it in any way, and it's probably got years of life left. That's been my typical experience with Windows PCs, especially in more recent years.

  • when TVs became available it did not kill radio, it just changed the demand for radio, for most people radio went to the back burner, and automobiles still have radio as the primary source in entertainment and news & weather and traffic information. the PC still has value as a useful tool, despite mobile devices gaining a foothold as an internet connected device,

  • The "death of the PC" has been getting forcast for nearly 20 years.
    Yet it keeps NOT happening.

    The only people less dependable in their predictions are Climate Change doomsayers.

    • The only people less dependable in their predictions are Climate Change doomsayers.

      You're one of those global cooling dingdongs, aren't you?

  • The desktop role is not going to die. Of course, device makers would love it if everyone moved to a locked down device like an iPad or a modern smartphone, but realistically, if one is putting in a lot of input, editing code, or having workflows more complicated than clicking on a web browser, PCs are still king of the hill.

    Even though the physical form can be different, the role of a desktop isn't going anywhere, as tablets and smartphones are great for media consumption, but not media generation. The ph

  • Just bad journalism (Score:3)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Wednesday August 30, 2023 @09:35AM (#63808346) Homepage
    The "death of the PC" articles are always written by the people least qualified to write them: disenfranchised journalism grads given the "tech column" almost nobody reads living in a shitty apartment in a big city with an iPad who realizes you can attach a keyboard to it and write articles from their breakfast table and make just enough to buy their $8 coffee today. They have no idea what people actually use PCs for. It's absurd. It's like pre-schoolers declaring steak is dead because spaghetti is better. Almost everybody doing any serious technical work is doing it on a PC.
    • The fanless 1L industrial computer style is where the death of the industry has come from by cash flow. They are dirt cheap and as reliable in their environment as 1U 19" or PC cases in manufacturing. A good number of the expensive on a monthly basis machines no longer need a PC cart next to them, they run Linux, join the wifi and are managed by web interfaces. Blown NICs are all but gone. The custom cable problem has all but gone away.

      On the shop floors, in the dirt and gram the 1U 19" computer

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RobinH ( 124750 )
        But isn't that like saying the face mask industry is dead in 2023? There's a steady baseline demand for face masks in hospital environments, but 2020 to 2021 blew the roof off that market and then demand tanked again. Similarly there's a baseline demand for PCs as a technical workstation, and as gaming PCs. The fact that we threw a lot of PCs into dumb terminal applications for a while until thin clients matured hardly means the baseline demand is gone.

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