The struggle is real: Acer revenues dip 30 percent in second quarter

[Shawn Knight]

The decline of the PC has been discussed ad nauseam. Just last week, we learned that PC shipments dropped by nearly 12 percent during the second quarter. Predictably, the trend is putting the world’s largest PC vendors in a very tough predicament.

Acer, the fifth largest computer vendor in the world, has revealed that revenues for the second quarter plummeted more than 30 percent. The admission was independent of a full earnings report but the message was loud and clear: Q2 was the smallest quarter for Acer since 2006.

The company is reportedly hoping that strong sales of 2-in-1s, Chromebooks and gaming notebooks will help it turn the corner in the second half of the year. The looming release of Windows 10 should also help not just Acer but the entire industry.

The PC industry has faced an uphill battle for close to a decade now. The rise in popularity of tablets and smartphones means consumers are updating their home PCs less frequently. Worse yet, some have phased out traditional computers entirely in favor of mobile devices.

During the PC’s heyday, it wasn’t uncommon for consumers to replace their computer every couple of years or so. Fierce competition between AMD and Intel during the late ‘90s and into the early ‘00s turned out processors with meaningful performance enhancements that gave users a reason to upgrade.

Once AMD waved the white flag, however, it allowed Intel to take its foot off the throttle a bit. With no real competition to speak of, Intel was no longer required to push the performance envelope as it once had.

As a result, consumers are able to get far more life out of a processor (and in turn, a computer) than they once were. Solid state drives and perhaps graphics cards excluded, today’s hardware isn’t all that faster than what was available 3-4 years ago.

The lower turnover rate is just one of a number of reasons why the PC industry is where it is today. Desktops and notebooks still have their place and will be around for quite a while longer but its golden days are clearly in the rearview mirror at this point.

Lead image courtesy Krizstian Bocsi, Bloomberg

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/61342-struggle-real-acer-revenues-dip-30-percent-second.html

 

[Guest]

There's a whole generation now that couldn't care less about PC's
and because of it, the market has permanently shrunk.

Not rocket science ...

 

[Evernessince]

"Desktops and notebooks still have their place and will be around for quite a while longer but its golden days are clearly in the rearview mirror at this point."

If you consider upgrading your graphics cards and CPU every two years the golden days, you have a flawed perception. It's because we don't have to upgrade so much anymore that PC gaming has been able to grow so much. Drivers have grown very stable and it's never been easier to build a computer.

No, the PC market is still growing, despite what flawed OEM based reports say. I would guess that less then half of PCs today are from OEMs, especially desktop machines.

 

[noel24]

I've been changing PC every two years since 2000. For the same money twice the performance, twice the storage. That ended 2011 or so. Now, since 2010, still waiting for a 1440p LCD for the price of then 1080p. Samsung working on a 11K smartphone diplay I've heard. Awsome. Today's WD40EZRX costs exactly twice that what in 2011 I've paid for HD204UI. No progress here. 2011's, $110 HD6850 has exactly third of 2014 $330 GTX970 performance in 3dmark, but for the same $110 you could hardly get twice more powerfull 750Ti. Can't even call it stalemate. If someone bought an i5-2500K for gaming in 2011, he won lottery ticket, cause after OC it will last at least over a Skylake, when games are concerned, just look at Techspot's own game reviews. And that's just gamer's point of view. Corporation execs probably feel similar. Usual laptop buyers feel the same. ACER and others should stop bitchin', it's their own greed and laziness.

 

[drjekelmrhyde]

We hit peak. Tablet sales are dropping just as fast if not faster . iWatch isn't moving.

 

[psycros]

Yeah...the lack of serious advancement in PC tech hasn't really bothered me. Less money wasted on CPU, RAM and video upgrades means more cash for drive space and actual software. Developers will have to better optimize their code to keep a large audience, plus it eliminates one of the sorriest excuses for terrible console ports, "the PC just couldn't handle it." What WOULD be nice is Windows 9, with real improvements to performance, usability and so on. Oh well..

 

[Cycloid Torus]

Slower market yet competition should mean either lower price or improved performance. If neither lower price not improved performance, then fewer sales.

 

[Rippleman]

No, the PC market is still growing, despite what flawed OEM based reports say.

you and you alone have hold this position. So you are claiming that almost every retail/wholesale/online seller/PC maker/PC builder/OEMS are all in on the same conspiracy? For what?.....tax savings?

 

[gingerbill]

The PC market's not at it's peak but every market has a peak , it's hardly a dead industry. It's sales by that chart are higher now than 8 years ago.

For sure people replace there PC less , think that's mainly because they reached a stage were they were fast enough for most users need's. It's good you don't feel the need to have to replace them every 2 years .

 

[Evernessince]

you and you alone have hold this position. So you are claiming that almost every retail/wholesale/online seller/PC maker/PC builder/OEMS are all in on the same conspiracy? For what?.....tax savings?

See, this is the kind of post I would expect from someone who just consumes these analyst firm's reports without actually reading what they cover. For the un-informed, Gartner and IDC bases their sale figures from a selection of OEM's retail sales.

The fact that they don't cover the whole market (no online OEMs) and not even all the Retail ones is more than enough to know that whatever they come out with is going to inherently be flawed purely based on the data used. It's like taking five cancer patients who reacted positively to a drug and calling cancer cured.

The second part of your comment shows you are more interested in perusing wild fantasies than any actual reasoning.

These analyst firms need to start measuring growing markets like custom PCs and online OEMs if they want their data to hold any relevancy. If PC sales are on the decline, why do we keep seeing PC centrist companies like Intel and Nvidia posting huge profits? Why is stream still growing and the number of MMO subs increasing? If the PC market really had a 20% dip each quarter none of these other variables would be positive.

 

[Guest]

Desktops last forever, if user built. Where laptops seem to die all the time due to them being moved around, dropped the whole time. This is what I have noticed as someone who repairs pc's for friends and acquaintances.

 

[Rippleman]

See, this is the kind of post I would expect from someone who just consumes these analyst firm's reports without actually reading what they cover. For the un-informed, Gartner and IDC bases their sale figures from a selection of OEM's retail sales.

I owned a computer business/store for almost 15 years. When first opened, it would be an average day to sell 3 PC's a day. Then after 5 years, 2 Pc's a day. Then 5 years later 1 pc a day. Rewind to a couple years ago, couple PC's a month. I have dozens of friends in the industry that seen the exact same thing. All shop owners I know have same experience. I know many managers at large retail retail places like BestBuy. They all say the same thing about the PC department. I not only speak from my own experience, but dozens of others. How can you say that you are correct when all PC makers are saying the same thing? Even Microsoft themselves show it. I know about 10 wholesale sellers in my buying chain that just simply shut because of lack of business. You have an odd perception.

 

[BSim500]

And as usual it barely needs pointing out : "A fall in new sales" does not = "No-one uses PC's". DVD player sales are falling too. Why? Because despite DVD's still outselling Blu-Ray's 2:1, most people don't rush out and buy a new DVD player every year purely for the sake of it. The PC market has simply become saturated and gradually turned into the same "mature appliance market" as 720-1080p TV's, printers, cookers, fridge-freezers, dishwashers, hi-fi's, etc, where once "first sale" surges of new tech have evened out, many people will then only buy a new one when an old one breaks.

Even tablet sales are falling. Why? Same reason - over-saturation in the first buy market whilst only a smaller percentage of tablet owners are "hyper-consumers" that rush out and buy a new one every 6 months on the back of the latest gushing marketing over-hype. And since it's those "hyper-consumers" that get all the media attention, this leads to heavily skewed perceptions for technophiles employed by tech sites who are endlessly "surprised" over a natural fall in sales figures due to a perfectly ordinary maturing market...