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rfmcdonaldWired's Brian Barrett suggests that the market for PCs is still relatively strong, that they still have durable niches.
Last year was rough for PCs. There’s no getting around that. But it wasn’t bad enough to merit the doom and gloom that has accompanied two reports detailing their continued decline in popularity. The PC situation is much better than the pundits would have you believe.
The reports, from industry-tracking stalwarts Gartner and IDC, show an overall drop in the global PC market of 8 and 10.4 percent, respectively. That sounds bad. And to be fair, it’s not actively good. Take a closer look at what the numbers actually say, though, and the context in which they say it, and you have a picture of an industry whose death has been greatly exaggerated.
Unsurprisingly, the “global PC market” comprises a lot of moving parts. A single number, however dramatic it appears, belies a range of strengths and weaknesses. Especially when that number, in one instance, doesn’t include a substantial chunk of what reasonably could be considered a PC.
Let’s look at just what we’re counting here. Gartner lumps in detachable devices like Microsoft’s Surface in with traditional PCs, while IDC explicitly does not. That somewhat explains the gap between the two, but IDC concedes that including those increasingly popular hybrid devices would have resulted in an overall decline of 7.5 percent for the year—in line with Gartner’s figure—and 5 percent for the last quarter.
More importantly, IDC sees what it calls detachable tablets “growing quickly, but from a small base.” That’s especially impressive given that the most visible of them, Microsoft’s Surface Pro, didn’t receive an update until deep into October. That’s encouraging, if that really is where the industry is moving. But even if it isn’t, and traditional PCs turn out to be what we wanted all along, the picture’s still not nearly so dire as it seems, particularly in the US. Stateside, IDC says PC shipments fell just 2.6 percent in 2015 compared to 2014. Gartner pegs it at 2.7 percent. In either case, nothing close to a freefall.
The pockets of strength aren’t just geographic. Apple managed to increase worldwide shipments by 5.8 percent (Gartner) or 6.2 percent (IDC) last year. Lenovo saw a monster year in the US, increasing shipments by 14.5 percent.
The reports, from industry-tracking stalwarts Gartner and IDC, show an overall drop in the global PC market of 8 and 10.4 percent, respectively. That sounds bad. And to be fair, it’s not actively good. Take a closer look at what the numbers actually say, though, and the context in which they say it, and you have a picture of an industry whose death has been greatly exaggerated.
Unsurprisingly, the “global PC market” comprises a lot of moving parts. A single number, however dramatic it appears, belies a range of strengths and weaknesses. Especially when that number, in one instance, doesn’t include a substantial chunk of what reasonably could be considered a PC.
Let’s look at just what we’re counting here. Gartner lumps in detachable devices like Microsoft’s Surface in with traditional PCs, while IDC explicitly does not. That somewhat explains the gap between the two, but IDC concedes that including those increasingly popular hybrid devices would have resulted in an overall decline of 7.5 percent for the year—in line with Gartner’s figure—and 5 percent for the last quarter.
More importantly, IDC sees what it calls detachable tablets “growing quickly, but from a small base.” That’s especially impressive given that the most visible of them, Microsoft’s Surface Pro, didn’t receive an update until deep into October. That’s encouraging, if that really is where the industry is moving. But even if it isn’t, and traditional PCs turn out to be what we wanted all along, the picture’s still not nearly so dire as it seems, particularly in the US. Stateside, IDC says PC shipments fell just 2.6 percent in 2015 compared to 2014. Gartner pegs it at 2.7 percent. In either case, nothing close to a freefall.
The pockets of strength aren’t just geographic. Apple managed to increase worldwide shipments by 5.8 percent (Gartner) or 6.2 percent (IDC) last year. Lenovo saw a monster year in the US, increasing shipments by 14.5 percent.
