PC shipments on the decline once again as Q4 "turnaround" skewed by holiday sales

Shawn Knight

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Many in the PC industry hoped that last year’s fourth quarter double-digit increase in worldwide shipments would be the turning point of an ugly downturn that dates back several years. New data from a pair of market research firms suggests the “turnaround” was little more than a mirage fueled by holiday sales.

In its latest report, Gartner found that global PC shipments during the first quarter of 2015 were down 5.2 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Specifically, manufacturers shipped 71.7 million PCs this quarter versus the 75.7 million moved during the first quarter of 2014.

According to IDC, the gap is even wider with a decline of 6.7 percent year over year, from 73.3 million units shipped to just 68.5 million.

Gartner notes that HP and Lenovo were the only two vendors among the top five worldwide that experienced an increase in PC shipments during the previous quarter. Lenovo shipped 5.7 percent more PCs in Q1 2015 while HP moved 2.5 percent more.

Last year wasn’t all that bad for the PC as many people looked to replace old machines running Windows XP with something newer. If you recall, Microsoft ended support for Windows XP in April 2014.

Microsoft could once again have an impact on the global PC market when it launches Windows 10. By all accounts, Microsoft’s new operating system will build on the shortcomings of Windows 8 – an OS that many felt catered more to mobile users than its traditional desktop user base.

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Take into consideration that IDC only took a sample size of 5 OEM PC makers. This does not even include the growing boutique or do-it-yourself sales.

The only thing this says to me is that IDC needs to badly improve it's metrics, which were outdated 8 years ago.
 
That and Windows10 is coming soon... people usually wait till the release.. for some reason... hardware is hardware but don't see it as so...
 
The only thing this says to me is that IDC needs to badly improve it's metrics, which were outdated 8 years ago.

You have a data source that indicates an opposite market trend?

Yep, stream. If the PC market is supposedly saturated and only really selling replacement machines, how come digital services like stream are reporting record numbers year after year? These PCs have to come from somewhere.
 
Yep, stream. If the PC market is supposedly saturated and only really selling replacement machines, how come digital services like stream are reporting record numbers year after year? These PCs have to come from somewhere.

Demand for digital services is not driven or enabled by new PC purchases; it's driven by content, availability, and price.
 
That and Windows10 is coming soon... people usually wait till the release.. for some reason... hardware is hardware but don't see it as so...
That doesn't matter, if you buy a PC with windows 8 on it right now they are doing a free upgrade to windows 10
 
Those who think something is wrong with Win 8 never have used Win 8. There is nothing wrong with Win 8. Win 8's issues were all but fixed a year ago. People just like to complain about the interface is all.

Win 8 has tons of improvements over 7. Win 10 is more of technology change than anything else. Will likely be more hated due to what is coming, no more IE except legacy support, touch screen coming back, new voice command system and several services will be going away. Also a new MS office 2016, like it or not these will happen.
DX 12 coming will be big for gamers. Who tend to buy more when things are going good. Win 10 has been tested by people for 8 months, all indication is it will be good.
 
Those who think something is wrong with Win 8 never have used Win 8. There is nothing wrong with Win 8. Win 8's issues were all but fixed a year ago. People just like to complain about the interface is all.
Wrong, Windows 8 still has a lot of issues, mainly driver related.

Win 8 has tons of improvements over 7. Win 10 is more of technology change than anything else. Will likely be more hated due to what is coming, no more IE except legacy support, touch screen coming back, new voice command system and several services will be going away. Also a new MS office 2016, like it or not these will happen.
You clearly don't know what you are talking about. Win 7-10 has slight performance gains, the rest is mainly cosmetic.

DX 12 coming will be big for gamers. Who tend to buy more when things are going good. Win 10 has been tested by people for 8 months, all indication is it will be good.
When DX9 is the still most common direct x in use, why should I care about 12? Also considering the massive gains OpenGL has made on DirectX, I think this is coming to an end.
 
Well, aside from DirectX and new Windows I think there's also the matter of not THAT much innovation in the basic hardware of newest PCs. Remember - retail (non-DIY) PCs are more expensive, and considering how little gain there would be it just doesn't seem that much attractive.
 
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