http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/10/pc-shipments-mark-biggest-decline-in-nearly-20-years

This is both scary and sad at the same time. Wow.

This article doesn't seem to take into account computer parts, as in people building their own computer/having people build a computer for them. Which I would think is a fairly growing and substantial number.

That's not surprising, the average person doesn't really need a PC with all the internet capable tablet and smartphones out there now.

Not terribly surprising, I suppose. A lot of people jump to the conclusion that this downturn is the direct result of things like the rise in popularity of tablets. While I think that probably contributes quite a bit, I think equally to blame is the fact that computer hardware has simply been able to do what most people use computers for very well for quite some time now. People that mostly use their computer for e-mail/web, word processing, etc. are probably perfectly happy with hardware from 5+ years ago. There's just no reason for them to upgrade anymore.

Still coming out of depression + rise in mobile computing + Businesses avoiding Windows 8 (which has always been a big driver of prebuilt desktop sales) = this very obvious conclusion.

So far, Samsung and Acer (and one other, maybe Sony?) have been quite explicit in their blaming of Windows 8 for the massive sales downturn. Yeah, it's a factor, but definitely not the only one.


More important than that: the business sector has always been the big driver of PC sales and the majority of the business sector has finished or is quickly finishing up (woo, I'm about 3 months away myself ^__^ ) their migration to Windows 7 so are buying less PCs and aren't jumping to Windows 8. Microsoft's kinda a victim of their own success here: for the past 2 years they've been pushing hard to get businesses to upgrade and so now most are

Very true as well. Large companies tend to get rid of older, depreciated machines in favor of getting good deals on bundles of hardware and software from PC manufacturers whether they really need the new hardware or not. If I were a buyer for such a company I'd likely be sitting out this upgrade cycle...I'd have nothing to gain from moving to Windows 8.

The typical computer is far from dead, despite what all the figures show. Yes, mobile computing may become the norm but it will never be able to offer the same type of power as a typical machine. They'll always have their place, it just may change some. However, it likely won't die anytime in the near future.

It won't die completely, but the fact of the matter is that the types of use cases that require a lot of computing power (by today's standards...like gamers, engineers, multimedia content authors, etc.) represent a relatively small portion of the whole computing market.

Yep, that's part of what I was saying.