PC Market Shrinks, People Want More Tablets
PC manufacturers experienced the first decline in overall PC shipments in the first quarter since the most recent recession.
This time, however, the reason may not be another looming recession, but the simple fact that the netbook is on its way out and PC manufacturers did not respond quickly enough to a changing market environment.
According to Gartner, the overall market lost 1.1% and dropped to 84.3 million shipped PCs in the first quarter of this year. HP and Dell lost slightly, but Acer dropped by 12.2% from 12.4 million PCs to 10.9 million. Lenovo and Toshiba were able to increase their sales by 16.6 and 5.3%, respectively. Gartner indicated that Acer is especially vulnerable as the company is especially dependent on netbook and mini-notebook shipments. It is quite apparent that the iPad has impacted the netbook market, but Gartner said that it is unclear whether this is a short-term or a long-term trend.
In the U.S., Apple gained 18.9% and sold 1.5 million PCs as compared to less than 1.3 million in the quarter one year ago. The only other manufacturer that was able to increase its shipments in the U.S. was Toshiba (+10.9%). The overall PC market contracted by 6.1% to 16.1 million units, according to Gartner. It is quite apparent that Apple has found a way to extend its product line with the iPad, which does not affect its own product sales, but apparently hurts traditional PC vendors.
So apple introduced a new iPad, which increased sales somehow? That's crazy talk, Douggy.
tablets? really? more toys for tech declined errr...
I highly doubt people buy an iPad instead of a PC. Just because it's also a computing device doesn't mean it directly affects one another.
I guess im a power user. Why use a tablet when i can use a laptop. why use laptop (besides for mobile reasons) when i can use a self built PC?
Desktops and laptops have lost a lot of ground compared to where they were, however their extra size allows for a lot more hardware, so they will still have a place with gamers and other dedicated people who need the processing power or screen size. Smartphones and tablets, which are just smartphones with larger screens, are good for portable media and web browsing, but the lack of a physical keyboard prevents them from getting serious typing tasks accomplished. Netbooks have lost the sales of browsers and media fans, but they were never really made to handle HD media. You also can't argue with the price, considering netbooks still can hover around 300, whereas tablets hover more around 600.
The market has diversified, but everything still has it's place. The near future has a lot of tablet/netbook hybrids, which blur the lines between these markets further, but the only thing that's really lost it's market space is portable media players. Smartphones and tablets have indeed made such devices obsolete for any reason other than price.
Probably over three quarters of the world. Maybe more. The enthusiast market is really a lot smaller than a lot of people make it out to be...
This is what I was thinking. If they added the custom built PC's these numbers would be very different. People who by pre-builts are not real PC users.
usb bug? Me thinks you need to refresh your mind good person. Usb was never an issue.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cougar-point-sandy-bridge-sata-error,12108.html
(is there really?), weather a title is legal or not they still need to buy the hardware to run the game anyway.
I agree.
Having a none OEM computer doesn't make you an enthusiast. I built thousands of computers for people for their normal email and web surfing needs that where in the $200 to $400 rang. You likely meant to say the informed people are a lot smaller of the population then most make out. Some people rather save a couple hundred to a few hundred on a computer that doesn't have a crappy dell case or crappy dell software on it. They also might not want to pay $150 for the dell name.