Posted on 10/08/2015 9:52:14 PM PDT by dayglored
The world's personal computer factories could only shove just over 70 million machines out the door during 2015's third quarter, according to box-watchers IDC and Gartner.
IDC says sales were down 10.8 per cent year on year, a worse outcome than the 9.2 per cent dip the firm previously predicted.
Windows 10 is partly to blame, says Jay Chou, IDC's research manager for its Worldwide PC Tracker, because punters are happy to take Microsoft's free Windows 10 upgrade without buying a new PC. Over time, Chou reckons, “the improved PC experience across user segments should drive longer-term demand for new PC hardware that is expected help stabilize the market in 2016 and beyond." Intel's Skylake processors will help future sales, too, IDC says.
Gartner concurs, arguing that Windows 10's advent was never going to produce a PC sales spike, but adding that the appreciation of the US dollar hasn't helped matters by making PCs more expensive beyond the land of the free. In the future, however, the firm's research indicates that “50 percent of consumers expressed intention to purchase a PC in the next 12 months, compared with 21 percent for tablet purchase intention.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
For the Apple angle on this same Gartner data (Apple came out better than the PC vendors), see http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3346533/posts
Maybe their sales would be better if they loaded them with Windows 7. I will be buying a Mac this year .
> Maybe their sales would be better if they loaded them with Windows 7. I will be buying a Mac this year .
I hear ya there about Win 7. In fact I’m hoping the new Surface Book can be retrograded to Win 7. If it can’t do it native, I’ll run VMware and it’ll live in the Win 7 VM rather than the host.
I don’t now, nor have I ever bought a PC for it’s OS upgrade..I buy them for the hardware upgrade.
Looking at some Intel7 powered stuff right now. I’d like a SSD drive and a pile of ram. I could care less if it has 10 or 7 or 8 on it.
If anything, the free w-10 should have spurred a few sales on the stuff in the stockroom that could be upgraded for free within the MS time period. Assuming the OS was that important.
I think it’s all hooey.....people talking smack...
I don’t think Surface can run win-7..
No touch interface..
That started in 8, if I recall.
What they would have to do, is rewrite win 7 and incorporate win 8 into it.
Oh! Wait....I forgot....They did exactly that with win 10.:-)
The new machine came preloaded with 10 and, so far, no issues. The new interface is a big improvement over Win8 but I still installed Classic Shell.
I did the Win 10 upgrade on my laptop when I was in the hospital last week, for something to do. So far, so good.
Not even 5 posts in and someone’s bitching about new Windows not being like the old Windows. I’m tired of reading this. We know, you think Windows 7 was the best ever. We know, you think Apple is better than Microsoft now. We know, you’re gonna buy an Apple. Just do it, go buy a latte and a sweater vest, sit in a Starbucks, write you’re novel, and shut up about it.
“Not even 5 posts in and someone’s bitching about new Windows not being like the old Windows. I’m tired of reading this.”
New Windows not being like the old Windows? I’m thinking now about the comparison between W7 & W8’s and all the rightful bitching that went on there.
A good analogy would be: “Next year General Motors will offer exciting changes to how you drive your car. The steering wheel will be in the trunk, the gas pedal in the glove box and the brake where the rear view mirror used to be. GM expects their new design to revolutionize driving and expect millions to flock to their new vehicles”.
I’ve been using Windows 8.1 for a few years now, and I have zero issues with it. There was a study conducted a year ago that showed that a large number of people complaining about Windows 8 actually never used the OS. If you spent more than 2 minutes actually going through the OS, you’d realize you can turn off the Start Menu that so many people hated in lieu of the old-school interface. I don’t get the self-imposed headaches people gave themselves over it. It’s a solid OS.
You have a solid point there, I’ve never attempted to use W8.
But I did read the reviews of many, and IMO it’s not geared for desktop optimum performance.
I just love it when I fire up W7 and see all those little icons for spreadsheets, CAD drawings, videos etc that are my work projects. Once fired up, a single click and I’m getting things done.
We all have our own preferences. I’m very comfortable with W7, if someone could demonstrate to me how W8 or newer gives a more efficient workflow, then I’d be game.
My current machine is just a few months old, and when I ordered it I asked the sales guy what businesses prefer when they order. He said the vast majority ordered W7, but many are still clinging to XP.
On the other hand if you and others like W8 and newer, that’s OK too because as of yet, this is still somewhat the land of the free.
I manage an Active Directory domain with over 2000 Windows devices, and a majority of them are Windows 7. I don’t have anything against the OS, but it’s “old” to me. Windows 8 boots faster and generally performs better than Windows 7 ever did. I also have a lot more management points in Windows 8 than I do in Windows 7 which makes for a better administrative experience for my desktop engineers when they are using Windows 8.
As you demonstrated, many people fell victim to the telephone game of criticism for Windows 8. Windows 8.1 fixed the issues with the Metro (Modern) interface being the default behavior, and the desktop was back to normal. I prefer the full-screen Start Menu for the search interface. The old way of organizing programs under the Start menu is just clunky to me now.
To each their own. I just wanted to point out that the Windows 8 criticisms should be taken with a grain of salt considering most people didn’t touch the OS itself. Mob mentality can be a cancer to tech adoption, and Microsoft screwed the pooch with marketing the Windows 8 OS overall.
The surfacebook will have a UEFI bios that will require Windows 8.1 or above since it likely won’t have a legacy option since the SP3 didn’t.
Won’t work since you need a touch interface and Windows 7 doesn’t have it
It’s not about bitching that new Windows is not like old Windows , it’s about slumping PC sales .
Not everyone that purchases a PC is purchasing for home use , business sales account for a nice chuck of the market share .
There isn’t much of a reason for them to purchase a machine with an operating system that still has not had all the bugs worked out and serious privacy issues .
I have half a dozen computers in my house and the little Mac is the most stable of all.
Business sales account for a large portion of sales, true, but those bulk sales are often made to corporations with customized deployment environments. My company does business with Dell, and none of our client machines come shipped with operating systems. We deploy our own. OEM operating system deployments are generally reserved for small businesses and home users.
Historically business PC upgrades have been driven by ever increasing hardware requirements of new OS releases. Most businesses have skipped Windows 8/8.1 and are upgrading from 7 to 10, and their existing hardware is working just fine.
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