Posted on 01/13/2016 10:41:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
It's no secret that PC sales are shrinking, as everybody and their mothers turn to smartphones and tablets. That has led to miserable holiday PC sales, with worldwide PC shipments down 10.6% year-over-year in the final three months of 2015, research firm IDC announced on Tuesday. Sales of PCs for all of 2015 came in at the lowest level since 2008, IDC said in a press release.
By the second half of 2016, IDC says, things should stabilize a little bit in the PC market: Enterprises and consumers alike will turn to Microsoft Windows 10, the latest version of the PC operating system, as their existing systems run into security and performance issues.
But the biggest takeaway from the IDC report, by my reckoning, is the idea that laptops with detachable tablet portions -- like the Microsoft Surface Book -- could mitigate the decline in the PC market.
If you factor in these so-called detachables, IDC estimates that the PC market's expected 3.1% decline next year becomes a positive 1% to 2% of growth. It's not exactly a barnburner of a statistic, but any positive growth is better than the alternative.
When Microsoft first announced the Surface Book laptop and Surface Pro tablet, the company said the whole idea was to give its PC manufacturer partners a little shove in the direction of the detachable market. And while that market is small today, IDC acknowledges, it's growing quickly, spurred by the massive interest in the Surface Book and the copycat devices it's inspired.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
If you want to know why PC sales are dropping, just look at Windows 10.
I think the PC sales were dropping long before Windows 10 came out.
Whether Windows 10 will stop it remains to be seen...
Hybrids are the future.
The consumption tablet is limited and they are too quickly obsolete. Many are cheaply made.
Regular laptops are near the end of their life, and don’t offer flexibility.
I like my PC. It has a nice large screen and I have a very nice keyboard that is great to use. I don’t and won’t own a smart phone, and a tablet is too small for my likes. I’ll stick with my PC and a phone that is just a phone and a camera that is just a camera. I don’t need or like to be connected to the www every waking moment of my life. Smart phones are voluntary micro chipping yourself for government tracking.
There are many desk jobs (including my own) that I could not imagine doing on a tablet. I think the pc will be around for a while.
I feel the same way.
Surface Pro is amazing. The Surface line will only continue to grow.
Looks like Microsoft is going more into the hardware development like Apple
I agree with you.
“It’s no secret that PC sales are shrinking, as everybody and their mothers turn to smartphones and tablets”
Makes sense doesn’t it. How about Mac sales. Does that follow the same trend?
Can’t wait to get my Surface Pro.
Well Said!
Hear!
Hear!
lol. I think Microsoft is reaping what it sowed. Their problem is that they are not Apple, not able to integrate hardware-software cool for any gadget out there. Yet if they try to make hardware, it might just become as shtty as Windows10.
XBox seem to be a success. I think they should buy or ally with a gaming laptop company and come up with a good platform and from here on out produce other stuff like smart phones. Tablets are used a lot for small business time gaming. It is the future use for tablets
We bought nothing ,we just upgraded to win 10 on a ton of these old refurbished PC’s
I’ve been using an ASUS Transformer 2 in 1 with detachable keyboard for everything for two years. Works great. I use it at my desk with a full size screen, keyboard and regular mouse but is great to carry just the tablet when moving around or to sit and read.
I find this unit has everything I need, runs all programs (Office, Project, etc) and streams video without a problem. Not bad with the greated convenience for around $200.
Overall PC sales would have been much worse than negative 10 percent, except for Apple Macs growing at 6 percent, continuing a trend of growing their share of the PC market. Non-Apple sales of PCs are down everywhere, while Apple bucks the trend.
“Yet if they try to make hardware, it might just become as shtty as Windows10.”
So you’ve never seen the Surface Pro before?
Say what you want about them, but that design is influencing all PC makers just like the original iMac did in the 90s.
Read my post#17. Mac sales continue to grow every quarter, bucking the trend of overall PC declines. Macs have been growing in sales at the rate of 6 percent or better and increasing.
I wish microsofe would have a clear ID system to compare surface book 4 with the clones. There is no real “version number” uniformity.
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