For PC Shipments, the Slump Is Back

And this my is why we have Windows 8. The numbers here don't include Chromebooks. Or Windows tablets and hybrids.
 
A lot of people are also waiting till 10 drops. We nerds understand the free 10 upgrade but mom and pop don't want to deal with it.
 
PCs have gotten so powerful in recent years that most people who aren't power users or gamers just replace them when they suffer a major hardware failure or get extremely old.
 
It appears for all practical purposes that the XP replacement rush has now ebbed and once again the PC market is going into another major slump.

The correlation with XP... hrmmm. Could it be that those systems were simply too old to handle the needed work?

Would they have been replaced if they were running some other OS?

Sure, part of it was because of MS dropping support for XP, but systems that came with XP in the first place needed to be replaced anyway, so it wouldn't really have mattered if they were running XP or not.
 
Or Windows tablets and hybrids.
Gartner specifically mentions convertibles in the press release, but excludes Chromebooks and Windows tablets with screens smaller than 10". IDC's shipment data includes Chromebooks in the note at the bottom, but excludes tablets. Both come to essentially the same conclusion that the shipments were down by around 5%.

Reality gets in the way you pull "facts" out of your butt. :D
 
People were bringing their Pentium 2 233mhz computers in with 20gb Hardrives, 4gb Riva cards and asking if they could upgrade to Windows 8.1. Or even nicer Pentium 3 800mhz PC's w/ 80gb Hardrives and slightly newer video cards. So many people were running 256mb/512mb configurations. People refused to listen when I told them they were below the minimum spec requirements for windows 7/8/8.1 due to their CPU's. People wonder why more don't go to the latest OS. People are using PC's sold old, I wouldn't even recommend they upgrade to Vista let alone 7 or 8 unless they just outright get a newer PC which a lot of older folks simply don't want to do. Hence why XP is still so prevalent. I love gaming on my PC but a lot of folks just surf and check email. I kept recommending iPads to them, they are so much cheaper than a newer PC and all they ever did was surf. Microsoft needs to figure out how to sell their OS to everyone, not just power users.
 
I buy hardware all the damn time, even when I don't need it, but when is the last time the majority of us have "bought a PC"? We buy PC parts by and large, unless we're getting a laptop or a really SFF system.

So if looking at the health of the PC, you shouldn't look of turn-key sales but just how many Windows computers are floating around in regular use. If the answer is still "fucktons", then there's nothing to worry about.
PCs have gotten so powerful in recent years that most people who aren't power users or gamers just replace them when they suffer a major hardware failure or get extremely old.
Kindof a late-life crisis, eh? I'm getting extremely old, and I need to strike owning a Broadwell off of my bucket list. Off to best buy!
 
I kept recommending iPads to them, they are so much cheaper than a newer PC
C'mon you can have a laptop at 400$ that will outperform any iPads (mini is 400$, other are double that). Saying most people don't need more than a tablet is right, saying an iPad is cheaper that's just wrong and stupid. You could say that about a cheap/mid range Android tablet tho.
 
A lot of people are also waiting till 10 drops. We nerds understand the free 10 upgrade but mom and pop don't want to deal with it.

probably not much to deal with. AFAIK, 10 is just going to be applied via windows update, so they just apply it an hour or 2 later, you've got a new OS.

I'm gonna do my best to install as many 7/8.1 licenses with 10 in the next year...just so I'm g2g in the future :cool:
 
I dream of a world where high end CPUs go down in price as does Memory. Perhaps this is the world that Intel speaks of.
 
Gartner specifically mentions convertibles in the press release, but excludes Chromebooks and Windows tablets with screens smaller than 10". IDC's shipment data includes Chromebooks in the note at the bottom, but excludes tablets. Both come to essentially the same conclusion that the shipments were down by around 5%.

Reality gets in the way you pull "facts" out of your butt. :D

· PCs include Desktops, Portables, Ultraslim Notebooks, Chromebooks, and Workstations and do not include handhelds, x86 Servers and Tablets (i.e. iPad, or Tablets with detachable keyboards running either Windows or Android). Data for all vendors are reported for calendar periods.

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25551715

Chill.
 
If MS would make an OS that people actually want on their PC, rather than something that has to be tolerated or avoided, the figures could look different.
As graphics performance gets better Microsoft take backward steps and give us an uglier interface that isnt easier to use either.

Even though the Windows 10 'upgrade' is free, I dont like what it is becoming and dont want it on my PC as presented.
Sad because I used to like trying new OS versions and heralding them.
Havent been able to do that since Windows 7.
The free upgrade is looking like another downgrade.

I dream of a world where I like the new OS.
 
Advancement has slowed to a crawl with AMD being years behind.

The enthusiast PC market is driven by gains in power and the corporate PC market is driven by necessity (mostly new OSes like XP expiring), neither one is happening right now.
 
Advancement has slowed to a crawl with AMD being years behind.

The enthusiast PC market is driven by gains in power and the corporate PC market is driven by necessity (mostly new OSes like XP expiring), neither one is happening right now.

I am not sure that it is totally the fault of the hardware manufacturers ... software isn't really pushing the envelope either demanding new and better hardware ... if the software market were pushing the boundaries more then Intel, AMD, and NVidia would have more incentive to push the hardware boundaries ... we need to return to the days when games couldn't be played on their highest settings because no one had the hardware required to run them at those settings
 
No significant advancements to computers in years. Why would the average user buy anything new right now, especially with this overloaded used market.
 
I am not sure that it is totally the fault of the hardware manufacturers ... software isn't really pushing the envelope either demanding new and better hardware ... if the software market were pushing the boundaries more then Intel, AMD, and NVidia would have more incentive to push the hardware boundaries ... we need to return to the days when games couldn't be played on their highest settings because no one had the hardware required to run them at those settings

Aside from GPU sales, I really don't think PC gaming significantly affects hardware sales. I think most will stay with the same HW as long as they can and if your primary use is web, office like apps, and movies, then you really don't need to upgrade. Certainly gaming will drive you to upgrade more frequently, but the masses aren't bleeding edge gamers.

Now if you're doing photo or video editing, then h/w becomes more important, but I suspect those are niche markets too.

That said, there's one reason i'm not upgrading right now: waiting to see skylake. I'd also like to make it to the next generation of GPUs, which should make 4k gaming more affordable (I really can't justify spending a grand on video cards, never mind the increased power requirements).
 
The correlation with XP... hrmmm. Could it be that those systems were simply too old to handle the needed work?

I'm finally replacing some of the last single core P4 systems in the office.
For the most part, they are still running the same 8 year old software. I upgraded them the windows 7 32bit (no cost due to our Microsoft licensing) a couple years ago, and just kept the best systems with the most memory (pulled from other systems). But with all the updates over the past couple years, the OS just keeps getting slower.
Nothing more I can do to keep them usable, couldn't even add a current SSD if I wanted to since they are using IDE drives. Even a basic i3 system with 4gb will be a huge upgrade, so it's time to retire them.
 
Forgot to add, most of them originally came with Windows 2000 :)
 
Aside from GPU sales, I really don't think PC gaming significantly affects hardware sales.
It doesn't. If you need proof, during the last slump, while overall PC sales were declining, actual gaming systems and hardware were on the rise. These trends are a lot bigger than the gaming or enthusiast market.
 
The new generation of consoles has made PC gaming pointless again at least until the computers 99% of the world buys have graphics cards that can come close to keeping up with a XBO or PS4 which won't happen for about 6 more years. Besides that, there are lots of people who can now just buy an iPad instead or use their phone for computing tasks instead of wasting money on some clunky outdated desktop computer form factor that's huge, eats tons of power, and can't be moved to a couch. I don't blame them. If you want games, buy a console. If you wanna check e-mail, get an iPad or just use your phone. While I'm still happy with my netbooks and will keep using them as long as they have support from Linux distros, there's just no place where computers fit into most peoples' lives.
 
PCs have gotten so powerful in recent years that most people who aren't power users or gamers just replace them when they suffer a major hardware failure or get extremely old.

Mostly it. I had absolutely no reason or need to upgrade my Athlon II Quad to a Phenom II Hex... so based on that, the Hex is probably going result in my using an AM3 socket for over 10 years... which is virtually unprecedented for when it comes to desktop use.

If you have a quadcore system that can have more than 8GB ram installed (read: Not DDR2), upgrades aren't really seen as needed to anyone but the absolute top tier builders.
 
The new generation of consoles has made PC gaming pointless again at least until the computers 99% of the world buys have graphics cards that can come close to keeping up with a XBO or PS4 which won't happen for about 6 more years. Besides that, there are lots of people who can now just buy an iPad instead or use their phone for computing tasks instead of wasting money on some clunky outdated desktop computer form factor that's huge, eats tons of power, and can't be moved to a couch. I don't blame them. If you want games, buy a console. If you wanna check e-mail, get an iPad or just use your phone. While I'm still happy with my netbooks and will keep using them as long as they have support from Linux distros, there's just no place where computers fit into most peoples' lives.

Troll harder. PS4 and XB0 were already outdated relative to PC hardware when they launched.
 
The new generation of consoles has made PC gaming pointless again at least until the computers 99% of the world buys have graphics cards that can come close to keeping up with a XBO or PS4 which won't happen for about 6 more years. Besides that, there are lots of people who can now just buy an iPad instead or use their phone for computing tasks instead of wasting money on some clunky outdated desktop computer form factor that's huge, eats tons of power, and can't be moved to a couch. I don't blame them. If you want games, buy a console. If you wanna check e-mail, get an iPad or just use your phone. While I'm still happy with my netbooks and will keep using them as long as they have support from Linux distros, there's just no place where computers fit into most peoples' lives.
And yet, steam now has more users than either Xbox Online or the Playstation network. It's almost as if PC users can game with varying degrees of hardware, since different games are more demanding than others. Afterall, it's not like the PC gets more games coming out for it than the PS4 and Xbox One combined, except... oops.
 
And yet, steam now has more users than either Xbox Online or the Playstation network. It's almost as if PC users can game with varying degrees of hardware, since different games are more demanding than others. Afterall, it's not like the PC gets more games coming out for it than the PS4 and Xbox One combined, except... oops.

Yeah honestly I really think people are just sick of what Microsoft is trying to get the public to buy OS wise. Instead of simplying PC's for the average PC user, they are instead hiding settings in the horrible UI they keep trying to push out. They tell us Metro is in the background now, the only ones that even wanted that garbage use Surface Tablets or a equivalent device and yet they still push that out onto non-touch devices like complete morons. It's why people are going to Consoles, Steam Boxes, iPads, their Smartphones. They are simply easier to use and more intuitive than what Microsoft is attempting to force us to use. Yeah Windows 10 will have Direct X 12. If the Stardock guys wanted, they could create a actual interface for Windows's modern garbage interface PC users would actually want to use. Why do Mac users get a nice usable interface while Microsoft tries to give us something, less than 10% of the global population even want to use. They need to take all the tablet crap out of the standard OS and push that to the tablets and leave the desktop OS alone. Frankly I've been sick of Windows since Vista and yet I still use it as I still love PC games. If Steam OS ever gets to the point where I can play 99% of the games I love, I'd simply dump Microsoft Windows forever. I don't know what the hell has happened to them as a company but whoever they have in charge and thinks the interface UI they have now is actually good, they should kick to the streets and give them a large cardboard box to live in. I'm back on Windows 7 Pro, I was sick of the Windows 8 Metro BS, sick of the Windows 10 Tech Preview, just give PC Enthusiast something we actually want to use. It's getting to the point of ridiculousness. I don't know very many 'average' PC users who have liked a Windows interface since Windows 7, which was released about 8 years ago.
 
Yeah honestly I really think people are just sick of what Microsoft is trying to get the public to buy OS wise. Instead of simplying PC's for the average PC user, they are instead hiding settings in the horrible UI they keep trying to push out. They tell us Metro is in the background now, the only ones that even wanted that garbage use Surface Tablets or a equivalent device and yet they still push that out onto non-touch devices like complete morons. It's why people are going to Consoles, Steam Boxes, iPads, their Smartphones. They are simply easier to use and more intuitive than what Microsoft is attempting to force us to use. Yeah Windows 10 will have Direct X 12. If the Stardock guys wanted, they could create a actual interface for Windows's modern garbage interface PC users would actually want to use. Why do Mac users get a nice usable interface while Microsoft tries to give us something, less than 10% of the global population even want to use. They need to take all the tablet crap out of the standard OS and push that to the tablets and leave the desktop OS alone. Frankly I've been sick of Windows since Vista and yet I still use it as I still love PC games. If Steam OS ever gets to the point where I can play 99% of the games I love, I'd simply dump Microsoft Windows forever. I don't know what the hell has happened to them as a company but whoever they have in charge and thinks the interface UI they have now is actually good, they should kick to the streets and give them a large cardboard box to live in. I'm back on Windows 7 Pro, I was sick of the Windows 8 Metro BS, sick of the Windows 10 Tech Preview, just give PC Enthusiast something we actually want to use. It's getting to the point of ridiculousness. I don't know very many 'average' PC users who have liked a Windows interface since Windows 7, which was released about 8 years ago.

You're basically saying the same FUD that was said about 7 and how nobody wanted that Ui over the near perfect XP with it's Windows Classic (see Windows 95) menu.

The start menu for 7/vista is a bit better than 8.1 (mostly because tiles aren't near your mouse, but it's not horrible and it appears that's been fixed in 10. Do I prefer the look of windows in 7? Sure, but the reality is at this point the only time I notice it is when people bitch about 8/10 not looking like 7.

10 is the future. If you want 7, you have a few years before it's no longer supported. At that point, I just hope you're not too old to learn a new UI.
 
Depends on the usage. For basic office apps, a c2q is still plenty.
 
You're basically saying the same FUD that was said about 7 and how nobody wanted that Ui over the near perfect XP with it's Windows Classic (see Windows 95) menu.
I'm pretty sure Windows 8 stirred up more complaints about the UI than XP, Vista, and Windows 7 combined.
 
Troll harder. PS4 and XB0 were already outdated relative to PC hardware when they launched.

Hardly anyone owns that supposedly faster PC hardware and developers can optimize for a known platform much more easily as is the case with a console. Like I said, the vast majority of PC purchases are for the lowest performing hardware at the least cost. There are very, very few people who buy mid- to high-end hardware and even fewer people who buy something that has any upgrade path (desktops). That's more of a "this forum" thing than anything else with the rest of the world having moved on to phones, tablets, and using consoles for entertainment. PCs will catch up when the very bottom end is performance competitive...in about 6 years.

And yet, steam now has more users than either Xbox Online or the Playstation network. It's almost as if PC users can game with varying degrees of hardware, since different games are more demanding than others. Afterall, it's not like the PC gets more games coming out for it than the PS4 and Xbox One combined, except... oops.

Steam counts all accounts of living and the deceased, active or not which they have to do in order to appeal to developers to use Steam to publish their stuff. Many people have tons of games in Steam they've played less than 30 minutes or haven't even downloaded...not even once. The number of active people on Steam at any given point is a lot lower than the number of people playing on consoles at the same time. Using total number of presently active people on all consoles and adding them together to compare to the active number of people using Steam will give you a much better idea of popularity, but that's an honest metric that makes PC gaming look really lame-o small potatoes so it's important to ignore it in order to keep the blinders up. Its also important to ignore developers putting priority on console releases first and giving the PC afterthought ports as a clear indicator of which end has higher sales performance otherwise we'd fall into that unfortunate situation where we have to acknowledge reality.
 
PCs last ages now. A Sandy Bridge rig from years ago is still more than viable for most people, even gamers.

The time of 2 year upgrade cycles ended a long time ago
 
Steam counts all accounts of living and the deceased, active or not which they have to do in order to appeal to developers to use Steam to publish their stuff. Many people have tons of games in Steam they've played less than 30 minutes or haven't even downloaded...not even once. The number of active people on Steam at any given point is a lot lower than the number of people playing on consoles at the same time. Using total number of presently active people on all consoles and adding them together to compare to the active number of people using Steam will give you a much better idea of popularity, but that's an honest metric that makes PC gaming look really lame-o small potatoes so it's important to ignore it in order to keep the blinders up.
Well this article DID say "ACTIVE" not people who created an account, played 30 minutes, then stopped 5 years ago. Regardless, 125 million active players is more than the 65 million it had 2 years ago. So that's at least 60 million accounts that have been created in the past 2 years. That sounds like big growth to me. I agree it would be helpful to see what Steam's total number of users are for comparison and what criteria they consider to be active however, but those are still huge numbers. And of course, this is not counting the 27 million players league of legends gets every day. Between that and concurrent users on steam, that's a minimum of 36 million people logging into play PC games every single day. You calling that "small potatoes" is just hyberbole. I'm not sure why you seem intent on trying to downplay just how huge PC gaming currently is. It reminds me of the tech journalists saying PC gaming was dying because they were seeing less and less retail sales while ignoring online ones.

Its also important to ignore developers putting priority on console releases first and giving the PC afterthought ports as a clear indicator of which end has higher sales performance otherwise we'd fall into that unfortunate situation where we have to acknowledge reality.
That's just one segment of the market. The AAA publishers act like dinosaurs and are still engaging in practices that made more sense 7 years ago, meanwhile gaming on the PC is utterly exploding elsehwhere. There are more PC exclusives coming out than ever thanks to unshackled indie developers and crowdfunding. Most of the games I've been looking forward to come from that segment. I mean look at how many damn games are coming out (as in decent looking ones, not the obvious crap ones) and it's simply staggering.
 
I'm pretty sure Windows 8 stirred up more complaints about the UI than XP, Vista, and Windows 7 combined.

Yes, but he's talking about 10, which will have a start menu. Maybe it'll suck, but the fact is every time MS changes the UI, all the whiners come out and there was plenty of bitching about 7 dropping the 95 start menu.

As for the 8 UI, I prefer 7, but the reality is I probably only go to the start screen and select an icon (as opposed to typing what I want and hitting enter), a handful of times in a day and from the screen caps I've seen, the 10 UI fixes what I dislike (from a functional POV).
 
Well this article DID say "ACTIVE" not people who created an account, played 30 minutes, then stopped 5 years ago. Regardless, 125 million active players is more than the 65 million it had 2 years ago. So that's at least 60 million accounts that have been created in the past 2 years. That sounds like big growth to me. I agree it would be helpful to see what Steam's total number of users are for comparison and what criteria they consider to be active however, but those are still huge numbers. And of course, this is not counting the 27 million players league of legends gets every day. Between that and concurrent users on steam, that's a minimum of 36 million people logging into play PC games every single day. You calling that "small potatoes" is just hyberbole. I'm not sure why you seem intent on trying to downplay just how huge PC gaming currently is. It reminds me of the tech journalists saying PC gaming was dying because they were seeing less and less retail sales while ignoring online ones.

The word "active" could mean anything. Since no one ever closes their Steam accounts after they die or after they grow up and stop playing computer games to live an adult life, I think that "currently connected" is a much more accurate measurement to compare to "currently connected" consoles, though that is a bit unfair to the consoles since they're more useful without an Internet connection and a lot of them are used for purely offline play. Even so, the field is still tilted heavily in favor of consoles being a more popular and common platform for gaming UNLESS you start counting casual types of games like Candy Crush and other stuff that [H] forum residents tend to get weirdly offended about. Anyhow, if you do count those, phones are the biggest and most popular gaming platform. Either way, the PC isn't it and costs too much for most people to buy with competitive hardware (that's that 6+ years thing I mentioned before).

That's just one segment of the market. The AAA publishers act like dinosaurs and are still engaging in practices that made more sense 7 years ago, meanwhile gaming on the PC is utterly exploding elsehwhere. There are more PC exclusives coming out than ever thanks to unshackled indie developers and crowdfunding. Most of the games I've been looking forward to come from that segment. I mean look at how many damn games are coming out (as in decent looking ones, not the obvious crap ones) and it's simply staggering.

That's the only segment of the market that matters. All developers seek to become wealthy and the only way they get there is by becoming a big publishing company. Those companies remain dominant in their market by releasing top selling titles for consoles first and their business strategy has carried them along very well as market leaders for a long time so they're clearly doing what works. UNLESS you count causal gaming which puts stuff like Angry Birds and Candy Crush on phones at the very top of the "copies sold" list which still puts PC gaming on the bottom-feeder rung of the entertainment ladder.
 
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