Worldwide PC sales numbers up first time in over 6 years!

[Furiku]

 

War against "Mobile devices" has been won, PC emerges victorious!

After over half a decade of lowering sales numbers in already saturated markets, new kinds of portable devices such as tablets, smartphones - 

Quote

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 62.1 million units in the second quarter of 2018, a 1.4 percent increase from the second quarter of 2017, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. This is the first quarter of year-over-year global PC shipment growth since the first quarter of 2012.

Hopefully these numbers will prove all doomsday prophets declaring PC as soon-to-be dead platform that PC is very much alive and well, and even growing again despite all the other competitors. 

 

 

 

Source article for more details and statistics: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180712005876/en/Gartner-Worldwide-PC-Shipments-Grew-Time-Years

 

[Jtalk4456]

please conform to tech news posting guidelines, but in the mean time, AWESOME!

[Teddy07]

Am I right that these numbers include only prebuilt PCs? If yes then these numbers can be misleading because people could have shifted to building PCs the whole time. 

[DocSwag]

1 hour ago, Teddy07 said:

Am I right that these numbers include only prebuilt PCs? If yes then these numbers can be misleading because people could have shifted to building PCs the whole time. 

Building your own pc is still a very small market though, compared to the number of prebuilts out there.

[MageTank]

Probably because it's cheaper to buy a prebuilt PC than what it is to buy a decent kit of memory at the moment  

[Cookybiscuit]

Holy fuck, 1.4% growth in one quarter after six years of decline? Are there any brakes on this train?

 

Shitty shill article by the look of it.

[Ginger_]

34 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Probably because it's cheaper to buy a prebuilt PC than what it is to buy a decent kit of memory at the moment  

now that GPU prices are consistently at or under msrp I'm pretty sure its back to being cheaper to build. RAM is still up there, but everything esle is well priced now

[MageTank]

4 minutes ago, Ginger_ said:

now that GPU prices are consistently at or under msrp I'm pretty sure its back to being cheaper to build. RAM is still up there, but everything esle is well priced now

Still doesn't satisfy my extreme thirst for 128GB of 3866mhz B-Die

[BuckGup]

2 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Still doesn't satisfy my extreme thirst for 128GB of 3866mhz B-Die

$$$

[MageTank]

1 minute ago, BuckGup said:

$$$

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232668

 

Could use about 4 of these... Though I'd settle for 2 kits. 

[BuckGup]

2 minutes ago, MageTank said:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232668

 

Could use about 4 of these... Though I'd settle for 2 kits. 

2 grand on memory isn't bad... That'd be sick though

[Captain Pirate]

Isn't the whole memory market pretty much getting sued for price fixing. I have no source that I remember so I could be crazy.

[Salv8 (sam)]

2 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

please conform to tech news posting guidelines, but in the mean time, AWESOME!

they look legit from what i can tell...

[yian88]

Thanks AMD.

[Commodus]

15 hours ago, Furiku said:

 

War against "Mobile devices" has been won, PC emerges victorious!

After over half a decade of lowering sales numbers in already saturated markets, new kinds of portable devices such as tablets, smartphones - 

Hopefully these numbers will prove all doomsday prophets declaring PC as soon-to-be dead platform that PC is very much alive and well, and even growing again despite all the other competitors. 

 

 

 

Source article for more details and statistics: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180712005876/en/Gartner-Worldwide-PC-Shipments-Grew-Time-Years

 

The first growth in six years doesn't mean PCs have emerged victorious -- in fact, it suggests the market is still pretty weak, and that the PC's glory days are never, ever coming back.  And remember, smartphone sales still easily outnumber PC sales.  62 million PC shipments?  Oh, that's nice... there were about 332 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter of the year.  It's good to see that the PC market isn't going to keep sliding, but you can talk about PCs being victorious when sales quintuple.

 

Also, did anyone actually declare the PC dead?  I don't believe so.  What they've been saying so far, and truthfully I might add, is that the PC is no longer the dominant computing platform.  Many people in the world only have a smartphone (and don't need more), while those that also have a PC may not invest much energy into supporting and upgrading it.  There's a good reason why Microsoft moved to its "mobile first, cloud first" strategy -- if it remained as fanatical about PCs as you are, it'd have been on a fast track to disaster.

[Christophe Corazza]

The issue is how they count PC sales which is completely BS:
1. they only count pre-made machines from big OEMs;
2. they do not count the value, only the units;
3. they do not count any parts sales toward the PC market, which is particularly BS when some crappy tablet sold for $ 50 counts toward sales, but $ 800 GPU does not. 

PC market has been doing very well for quite a while, you can see just by looking at financial results of Nvidia, Intel and AMD.

[Christophe Corazza]

3 hours ago, Commodus said:

The first growth in six years doesn't mean PCs have emerged victorious -- in fact, it suggests the market is still pretty weak, and that the PC's glory days are never, ever coming back.  And remember, smartphone sales still easily outnumber PC sales.  62 million PC shipments?  Oh, that's nice... there were about 332 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter of the year.  It's good to see that the PC market isn't going to keep sliding, but you can talk about PCs being victorious when sales quintuple.

 

Also, did anyone actually declare the PC dead?  I don't believe so.  What they've been saying so far, and truthfully I might add, is that the PC is no longer the dominant computing platform.  Many people in the world only have a smartphone (and don't need more), while those that also have a PC may not invest much energy into supporting and upgrading it.  There's a good reason why Microsoft moved to its "mobile first, cloud first" strategy -- if it remained as fanatical about PCs as you are, it'd have been on a fast track to disaster.

 

Phones and tablets are great for browsing, but there are many things that can't be done well or efficiently on a tablet or phone. They're just too slimmed down to do the job, not to mention all the scooting around you have to do to get it done. For that, you need a PC. They might not be as popular as they once were, but they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

[Drak3]

22 minutes ago, Christophe Corazza said:

The issue is how they count PC sales which is completely BS:

Also, the fact that 10 year old systems are powerful enough for casual use, 5 year old systems need a new GPU to pull off high end gaming.

 

Whereas a phone half that old starts feeling slower than hell to many people.

[Christophe Corazza]

12 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Also, the fact that 10 year old systems are powerful enough for casual use, 5 year old systems need a new GPU to pull off high end gaming.

 

Whereas a phone half that old starts feeling slower than hell to many people.

 

Indeed. Part of the issue is people no longer need to upgrade as frequently. It used to be you had to buy a new PC every few years if you wanted to stay up to date and run the latest games/programs. Now you generally only need to upgrade the GPU, because even a 5 year old i7 is still good enough for most gaming.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Christophe Corazza said:

 

Indeed. Part of the issue is people no longer need to upgrade as frequently. It used to be you had to buy a new PC every few years if you wanted to stay up to date and run the latest games/programs. Now you generally only need to upgrade the GPU, because even a 5 year old i7 is still good enough for most gaming.

Hell, higher end C2D and C2Q chips are good enough for all but the latest triple A games.

[Christophe Corazza]

40 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Hell, higher end C2D and C2Q chips are good enough for all but the latest triple A games.

 

Indeed. Although, not to say that's a bad thing per se.

It only comes to show that - especially gamers - don't really feel the need anymore to have upgrade that frequently.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, Christophe Corazza said:

 

Phones and tablets are great for browsing, but there are many things that can't be done well or efficiently on a tablet or phone. They're just too slimmed down to do the job, not to mention all the scooting around you have to do to get it done. For that, you need a PC. They might not be as popular as they once were, but they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Oh, I'm familiar with that -- and as I said, the PC isn't dead.  The problem is when you get people like the OP, who are convinced they can turn the clock back to 2006 and pretend smartphones are these rare beasts that will never eclipse computers.  Sorry, folks, but the era of PC leadership is over.  Even if PC sales are back to long-term growth, they're now just a minority in a world where many people don't need or can't justify them.

 

What I don't get is why people 'need' the PC to be dominant.  Is it because they're older and don't like that the technology they enjoyed in their youth isn't as relevant?  Does it stem from the same psychology that makes people rabid defenders of a product simply because they've paid for it?  C'mon, folks, relax.  The PC doesn't need to rule the landscape for you to feel good about using it.

[JoeCoke]

22 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Hell, higher end C2D and C2Q chips are good enough for all but the latest triple A games.

Yep! A Core 2 Quad, 8GB of RAM, a 560ti and an SSD still make a surprisingly solid machine. Throw in a CPU overclock and it'll be even better. (Getting a q6600 to 3ghz is easier than blinking). But that's just gamers and enthusiasts doing that kinda stuff, which is a tiny minority.

 

As for casual use, anything better than a Pentium 4 is fine for most. My bedroom HTPC is a Athlon 64 x2 with a x850xt and I use it to watch Youtube and Twitch.

 

So I'd say that's definitely a contributing factor to slow PC sales, the vast majority of people just don't need/want better. Main reason casual use people buy new computers is because "my facebook won't load" or "it's moving slow" or "it won't turn on".

[sof006]

I upgrade my PC very often. Also since I work in a store which sells PCs I've seen a recent rise in people purchasing gaming laptops/desktops. 

[Christophe Corazza]

3 hours ago, 2Buck said:

 the vast majority of people just don't need/want better.

 

Indeed, the only reason why people buy a new PC is - generally speaking - when something's wrong.

 

3 hours ago, 2Buck said:

"it won't turn on"

 

Literally the reason who someone I know bought a new laptop. She didn't bother to troubleshoot at all.

(Obviously, in all fairness, you can't expect someone who knows nothing about tech to troubleshoot a PC though...)