PC Rebound In Mature Regions Stabilizes Market

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Although worldwide PC shipments are down slightly, sales in the U.S. are up almost seven percent. Hit the link for the complete rundown.

The U.S. market showed strong 6.9% year-on-year growth in the second quarter of 2014. Continuing upgrades of Windows XP systems boosted shipments in commercial portables and desktops, helping the commercial segment. At the same time, retail acceptance of emerging product categories such as Chromebooks and ultraslims helped the consumer segment to stabilize. HP continued to hold the lead and gained 2% market share while four of the top 5 vendors experienced double-digit growth for the quarter. Lenovo and Toshiba took advantage of some consumer interest in Windows 8 and a push to build up their presence in large enterprises.
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Could it be that people realize that tablets suck?

176016099_nothanksipad.jpg
 
^^

Im using an ipad on the toilet right now. im fine with them for media consumption.
 
Ocean said:
^^

Im using an ipad on the toilet right now. im fine with them for media consumption.
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That's why you typed Im instead of I am or I'm. Also you used no uppercase letters except for the first one, which is default behavior on tablets in general.

Tablets are fine for media consumption, but using them to type anything longer than twitter-length is a total PITA.
 
Although I never bought into the whole concept of tablets replacing regular computers (the surface Pro might finally make that more of a reality though) I don't think this is an anti-tablet stance as much as it is a pro economy stance

As PCs have become more powerful people are able to hold onto them longer ... my business laptops have usually been on 5-7 year upgrade cycles ... for my home desktop I still use an E8400 based system (although I have upgraded video cards a couple of times) ... but the economy is doing better for both people and business so folks might be interested in upgrading computers (and the XP end of life has inspired some new upgrades) ... I am considering upgrading my home system next year once I get my bonus (I already bought my kids a new computer last year)

I suspect more people are going to become more of a gadget hound now that the economy is improving slightly ... I have one desktop (personal), two monitors (personal), one laptop (work), two smartphones (personal and work), and one tablet (personal) ... all of these devices serve a purpose and get used extensively ... next year I want to upgrade my smartphone, add another tablet (a Surface Pro), buy a new desktop, and buy another monitor (4K) ... I suspect others might be in similar need
 
The core problem with tablets isn't that they're keyboardless or anything, but the most powerful tablet doesn't compare to the slowest laptop. To add to it, beyond media consumption they're pretty worthless. Even then they don't do a good job at things like video games even. Primarily because touch screens are limited and there just isn't any good games. Android or iOS is extremely restricting in terms of what you can do with the device. I can get more benefits out of a tablet with Windows or Linux installed so long as it's x86.

A quad core ARM tablet is intrinsically worthless compared to a dual core x86 laptop, even with Intel graphics.
 
For a certain group of technology-challenged folks, tablets and cell phones are all they want/need. They were never computer customers in the first place. For the ~1.5B people on earth who use a PC every day, of course, nothing but a PC will do. They're just so much better in every way for people who know how to use them.

What I can't understand is why these companies like IDC think that the rebound is from people moving from XP to Win7/8...;) They should realize that neither businesses or consumers have to buy a new box in order to simply upgrade an OS. I think the economy is rebounding, of course, and the tablet fad has about run its course--and those two factors alone explain most of the increase in the US.

The sobering reality is that if Microsoft had been a lot smarter with Win8 and not been in such a hurry to copy Apple with tablets, Win8 could have been something special for PCs and would have most likely prevented much of the sales decline that we saw.
 
I got a free iPad mini from work. After using it a few months, I no longer see the need in them.
 
WaltC said:
The sobering reality is that if Microsoft had been a lot smarter with Win8 and not been in such a hurry to copy Apple with tablets, Win8 could have been something special for PCs and would have most likely prevented much of the sales decline that we saw.
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You kidding right? Only reason Windows 8 did as terrible as it did was because they wanted to turn Windows into a tablet OS. I could still get more out of a PC with Linux compared to Android or iOS devices.

The sobering reality is that companies went crazy after what they thought was the next big venture in computing. A lot of these companies nearly destroyed their core business in the process, including Microsoft. By why, what for? They just got too greedy.

Closed platforms means consumers are at your whim. They get whatever software you allow them to get, including OS upgrades as well as software. For example HTC for a long time left a lot of their devices stuck with Gingerbread and never upgraded. Apple's original iPad couldn't get Plants vs Zombie's 2, for some reason.

Every software sale you take a cut. Well known fact that Apple takes a cut from software sales on their iOS products, and similar situation happens on Android devices. So it's in their interest to keep you limited to what you can do. Time to buy an app.
 
CharlesLam said:
if you ask me ashbringer, we need to see more from *nix's. ubuntu boasted of its superior compatibility, but for the last 3 pc builds i have gone through, i had at least 1 incompatible product. The thing that has always bugged me is linux *could* be the answer to alot of problems. it just isnt. reinstalling an OS for a configuration/installation error should not be a solution, but it sometimes is with microsoft. but its better than the alternative of never having support to begin with.

I was pretty confident PC sales would rebound. what ive noticed is no one i have ever met wanted the new GUI win 8 brought to the table. and when i say no one i mean not a single soul. it boasted productivity efficiency but all it brought was frustration and anger. i still avoid windows 8 machines like the plague but i've learned how to work on them. i just really really dislike the clunky layout and complete waste of resources. tablets have limited ease of use. so while if its a small task it is quicker on a tablet, its almost impossible on a bigger task.

just my .02
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Although I am not supporting MS design decisions since I think the Cortes approach on the Win 8 GUI (Burn your ships) wasn't the best approach for them, I do think people sometimes overestimate the public objections ... the public had a lot of complaints about XP too (and it became one of the most popular operating systems ever) ... also, paradigm shifts are always kind of tricky, sometimes they are an overwhelming success (touch screen phones) and other times not so much (touch screen computers) ... the famous quote attributed to Ford (that was sometimes used by Jobs) is very true, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse"

with 90% of the PC market being in the mobile space all MS needs is a robust mobile centric OS with some minimal level of features targeted at the highly specialized desktop users ... if they do that with Win 9 they will retain their top spot in the OS game (since even with dismal failures like Vista and 8 they are still the go to OS for business and consumers) ;)
 
cdr_74_premium said:
That's why you typed Im instead of I am or I'm. Also you used no uppercase letters except for the first one, which is default behavior on tablets in general.

Tablets are fine for media consumption, but using them to type anything longer than twitter-length is a total PITA.
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Im not disagreeing with you, but i almost never ever use uppercase even with a keyboard. If i want to type somthing long and technical, im actually more likely to use my ipad because of dictation functionality built in.
 
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