They've Gotten Too Good
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Posted
Friday, April 12, 2013, at 1:29 PM
Dude, you're not getting a Dell.
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
PC sales suffered their steepest decline in history last quarter, plummeting 14 percent worldwide, according to a report from market research firm IDC. As the Statista
chart below shows, the malaise hit every major manufacturer except
Lenovo, whose sales were flat. HP and Acer had the steepest drops.
Why is this happening? There are two prevailing theories. One is that
it’s Microsoft’s fault. Historically, when Redmond releases a new
version of Windows, PC sales spike as people upgrade their machines to
take advantage of the fresh software. But with Windows 8, that hasn’t
happened. That may because the radical redesign is confusing. A year
ago, my colleague Farhad Manjoo predicted, “You’ll hate Windows 8.”
Some analysts speculate that people may even hate it so much that
they’re resisting buying a new machine just to avoid it. There may be
some truth to that. We'll know more once Apple releases its quarterly
earnings on April 23.
The second theory for PCs’ sales decline is that, in short, the PC is dead. The media say this at least a couple times a year, and the latest wave of pronouncments includes obituaries from Salon and ReadWriteWeb.
The idea is that, with people doing so much computing on their
smartphones and tablets these days, they have no need for their old
workhorse desktop or laptop anymore.
It's certainly true that people are increasingly spending money on
new tablets and smartphones rather than new computers. But reports of
the PC's demise are grossly exaggerated. If the PC is dead, what am I
typing this on? If the PC is dead, what are office-workers all over the
world sitting in front of all day while they work? The reason people
aren’t buying new PCs isn’t that they don’t need a PC. It’s that, for
the most part, they’re getting along just fine with the one they already
have.
In the past, you had to replace your computer every few years or else
it would become hopelessly bogged down trying to deal with the latest
desktop applications, operating systems, and Internet technologies. But
thanks to Moore’s Law, your average PC’s processing power now exceeds
most people’s daily needs by a healthy margin.
Meanwhile, the rise of the cloud has reduced the need for extra memory. And as ZDNet’s Simon Bisson explains in depth, a strategic shift by Microsoft in recent years has meant that you no longer need to buy a new machine in order to take advantage of each new operating system. The result is that PCs have become more durable than smartphones and tablets, which are still puny enough in their powers that you have to upgrade them regularly.
Meanwhile, the rise of the cloud has reduced the need for extra memory. And as ZDNet’s Simon Bisson explains in depth, a strategic shift by Microsoft in recent years has meant that you no longer need to buy a new machine in order to take advantage of each new operating system. The result is that PCs have become more durable than smartphones and tablets, which are still puny enough in their powers that you have to upgrade them regularly.
PC makers probably didn’t mean for that to happen, but there you have it. They're a victim of unplanned non-obsolescence.
Image courtesy of Statista
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