Worldwide PC Shipments Tumble After Windows 8 Discussion

A new IDC report shows PC shipments in the first quarter of 2013 dropped almost 14 percent compared to the first quarter of 2012. Are tablets and Windows 8 to blame?

Read the full content of this Article: Worldwide PC Shipments Tumble After Windows 8

 

Yeah, tablets and Windows 8 to blame!

 

I want a nice tablet with windows 8!

#partoftheproblem

 

I've got one!

#partofthesolution

 

I would also note that Haswell's expected arrival mid-year may be causing some people to hold back on their next purchase.

John

 

It's possible but Windows 8 was supposed to light a spark and did not. I think the following can be attributed to slowing PC sales where some PC mfg like Dell are questioning whether they should pull out of the market.

Here could be some reasons as to the slowdown:

1) Tablets, iPad etc.

2) PC Gaming has shifted to Home Consoles. The big driver of PC computer and PC component sales in homes since the mid 80's were PC games. The market has move to Home Consoles and Mobile devices.

3) A laptop from 2007 can run most software today. My T60 with a T7200 C2D runs anything I install on it.

4) Crappy economy and unemployment means people will buy PC computer or upgrade if it's an absolute necessity or they have extra cash.

 

And, I feel, reliability has improved over the years, so the need to replace on that account has reduced. That your T60 has a screen with a more usable aspect ratio might be another factor.

John

 

I thought it was the opposite. Go to popular game sites like Kotaku and you'll hear the end of console gaming and the rise of pc gaming.

 

PC gaming has been making a comeback of sorts but the data and facts support that "games" are clearly designed around home consoles first. Some have reasoned, piracy as a factor?

Games such as LA Noire, GTA IV, Need For Speed, Call of Duty and others were ports of the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Back in the 80's there was either Atari's, Nintendo's but for a serious gaming experience you bought a PC to handle that. ALL games were designed around the PC. Graphics companies such as ATI, Voodoo, 3Dfx, Rendition all came on the scheme to stake their claim on 3D graphics. Id's Wolfenstein followed by Doom, then Quake arrived on the scene and gamers like myself kept buying better and better PC's to play the latest and greatest games.

I remember going from a 386, to 486 within a year to play Falcon 3.0 and buying the latest audio card from Soundblaster. Then Microsoft released Flight Simulator 5.0 and all bets were off as I had to chuck my Gateway 2000 PC's and buy the latest just to play MS Flight Sim 5.0 and the latest and greatest PC couldn't handle it properly because there was no such thing as 3D graphics.

The point is, that no longer happens because the industry has shifted to Tablets, Smart Phones, Home Consoles. Sure you'll get the occasional PC game like Far Cry 3 or Battlefield 3 or a remake of Doom 3 but the PC gets seconds compared to Sony and Microsoft's home consoles. Also the hardware is NO longer pushed as hard as it used to be as a good GPU can offload the CPU so upgrades aren't as plenty as they used to be. Back in the early to mid 90's there was no 3D graphics, The CPU did everything so you had to constantly upgrade the CPU to play better games. Gamestop, rarely carries any PC games so that alone should say that gaming is no longer the bread and butter of PC's.

The only way that the PC can recapture it's throne to gaming is if the Home Console market completely crashes and it's either playing games on tablets or a PC.

 

I think the sites that claim that PC gaming is on the rise are including Farmville and Angry Birds and the like in "PC gaming." When you look at AAA gaming, particularly outside of the realm of MMOs, PC gaming is in serious decline. And considering how much cheaper it is to get a new Playstation every six years than a new Alienware every two years, I can see why.

 

That pretty much sums it up.