IDC: PC Shipments Dropped 13.9% in 1Q13

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irish_adam

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i know everyone seems to be blaming windows 8 but tbh i think its the low price of ram thats brought this about. I fix PC's for a living and tbh the biggest reason people upgraded there computers was a lack of ram, people would have like 20 stupid little programs that would load when booted (skype, monitoring software etc.) that would eat up all their ram and bring the computer to its knees and instead of just cleaning out the computer they would buy a new one. Now that computers come with like 4gb of ram standard i've noticed that people just dont see the point in upgrading and i dont blame them, the average person that surfs the internet and does a bit of word processing doesnt need a new computer every year of 2 anymore.
 
*windows 8 goes up on the stage to receive a trophy for this contribution to pc industry* "thank you, i know i am one of the main reason pc sales tanked. thank you microsoft and steve ballmer for inflating all my sales numbers. my rt version thanks microsoft surface and nvidia. thanks also go to all the bulldozer fanboys who prayed for my arrival and i helped bd cpus finally beat all those pesky pentium and core i3 cpus... or not."
/acceptance speech.
 

jhansonxi

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Not just RAM but the older hardware in general is adequate for most people. The primary drivers of upgrades were games and smaller form-factors. Consoles reduced the gamer demand. Many desktop users switched to laptops and are now moving to phones and tablets.

 

abzillah

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I agree with irish_adams and jhansonxi. The one other thing that is slowing down sales is that new products are not coming out for enthusiast. No new CPU or GPU on the market to get us upgrade. Also, games are not pushing the CPU and GPU to the limit, monitors aren't coming at higher resolutions like 4K, or 8K.
 

abzillah

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I agree with irish_adams and jhansonxi. The one other thing that is slowing down sales is that new products are not coming out for enthusiast. No new CPU or GPU on the market to get us upgrade. Also, games are not pushing the CPU and GPU to the limit, monitors aren't coming at higher resolutions like 4K, or 8K.
 

pacomac

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I can't believe everyone is so naive. The main reason PC sales have dropped is tablets, which do 75% of what te average user needs to do. Sure we all need a fully fledged desktop workhorse, but one is enough. Windows 8 might be bad, but I don't think it's so bad that it would stop people from replacing ageing hardware.
 

bak0n

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I'm looking for a price/performance level before I buy my next laptop. It hasn't reached that point where I feel its worth while. Might be Christmas time before I do at this rate.. I'm also sitting on 7 desktops and a Asus 1201n along with an orginal Asus netbook. All for 4 people... Ya.... I don't need another desktop.
 

w8gaming

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Consumers are not buying PC much because they already have them and the old PCs are still working fine. Consumers are buying tablets because they do not have one yet and like the mobility they offer. Soon, in fact, much sooner than most people think, tablets will suffer the same fate of PCs, and the market will implode when the market switch into replacement only cycle.
 

pacomac

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Well I'm on my 6th tablet now, and I don't see any signs of me slowing down. All these tablets have been purchased since my desktop upgrade to core i7. Tablets are just more exciting than PC's at this moment in time. I'm looking for the killer tablet, and not so interested in killer desktops.
 

InvalidError

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Just about every spec on phones and tablets currently doubles every two years and at this rate, mobile devices will catch up with PCs within the next five years. Beyond that point, there won't be much left to make people want newer tablets.

I expect tablet sales to start leveling off in about three years: new tablets around that time will likely enter the same "good enough for a long time" zone PCs are stuck in today and it will become an uphill battle from there to convince people to upgrade anywhere near as often as people do today with little to no convincing required... last year's tablets had 1GB single-channel RAM and ~1.2GHz CPUs while this year's model may have 2GB dual-channel RAM and ~1.8GHz CPUs; already enough to tempt many people even if everything else stays the same.
 

boytitan2

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This the average pc user has zero reason to upgrade right now.

 
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