Interesting lot of people thought it was business cycles. Which is only partly true. There is China and PC Gaming. Both are now a huge market. For the past 4 - 5 years, if it wasn't for PC gaming, Unit Shipment would have been falling 10%+ YoY.
Many years ago people thought console would take over gaming. And it turns out Keyboard and Mouse are irreplaceable for certain type of games. You may never play PSE or FIFA on your PC any more, but many more strategy games, Online Games, FPS are still on PC. And as generation of people who grew up in gaming, there is ever increasing number of people on Twitch or other E-Sport streaming site.
Unfortunately Apple thinks Gaming is a waste of time. And therefore Mac doesn't really cater for Games Developers. iOS Gaming is still a result of iOS popularity rather then Apple making it better. We can used to argue PC gaming is niche, for nerds, Riva TNT, 3Dfx, Rage 128, Radeon, Geforce.....
Now PC Gaming is no longer a small communities, and will continue to grow into much larger in the years to come.
I wonder if some of it is about the fact that the PC demand due to GPU shortages may be only short term. In any case, the demand was definitely very sudden and there is no way that Apple would have been prepared for it.
Your comment about iOS gaming implies that it is an inferior platform relative to Android in terms of gaming. In reality despite Apples myopic attitude towards desktop gaming their mobile gaming platform is better than androids by a significant margin.
Consider the following:
1) Per user revenue in iOS out paces per user revenue in Android by so much that many titles make more on iOS than they do on Android despite Android having ~70% of the market
2) Apples hardware & os provide superior performance relative to even premium Android phones despite Apples compulsion towards thinner. (This is largely due to vulkans infancy compared to the relative maturity of metal)
3) fragmentation
4) walled garden is actually a plus for developers who worry about apk sharing
5) Apples store does business in China making Apple a one stop shop for the world whereas android requires at least one separate partner just for China.
Note: Please pardon any grammar, spelling, & formatting errors due to this response originating from a mobile device
FPS are slowly moving to consoles though, and I think most popular genres will have the same trajectory.
Once there’s enough money to be made, publishers will tackle any issue there is to move a genre to the bigger audience.
That doesn’t mean for me that PC gaming will fade away, just that it will stay a limited market where makers will experiment more freely than on the other marketplaces.
If that’s true basically the PC market for business has hit bottom. There’s very little traction for non-PC form factors as daily drivers in business, so there is a minimum market size just to keep every employee equipped with a laptop, and this seems to be it.
The consumer market can still drop further though. Most people are fine using ipads, and probably even better off than with a laptop when all things are considered.
I think the interest in PCs grew, especially amongst the younger generation. With the new budget CPUs offering real good performance (a 8th gen i3 can offer approximately the same performance as a 7th gen i5), you can get much higher performance for your money than laptops. The price gap is much more evident when it comes to gaming.
Among my friends in their 20s, most of them want to build a PC. It could be the case that my generation didn't experience the growth and the decline of the PC market and we don't appreciate the value of laptops yet. The hype for building a custom PC certainly exists.
But from a consumer's standpoint, I also think laptops win in most cases.
Correction: Thanks to the reply, I noticed that "PC Market" statistics included both Laptops and Desktop PCs. I am leaving this post as is, as it represents my ideas on why there is still a -possibly growing?- interest for desktop PCs.
Maybe it’s because of intel’s shift of 2 -> 4 cores, and 4 -> 6 cores for their consumer line of cpus. It’s relatively a bigger performance jump than in the past.
From the source article linked in the first paragraph: "PC shipment growth in the second quarter of 2018 was driven by demand in the business market, which was offset by declining shipments in the consumer segment”
i'd guess that aggregate growth has outpaced other 'stagnating' factors which led to state of non-growth, aka the growth curves have adjusted for laptops, tablets, and smart phones
I wonder where the high demands of VR are driving the change. If I wanted to do VR I would finally have to upgrade my 5year old PC desktop that had been great. Aftermarket SSD and GPU greatly expand it's life.
I suspect that might have something to do with it coming back to the ‘cool kids’ corner’. I’m a designer, and a) being interested in ML / AI enough to the point that I needed neural nets running, b) and VR kits not struggling so I can keep an eye on that emerging market were the first two things in more than a decade that made my hardware feel just not up to snuff. The last of such ‘I need real hardware’ feeling was the jump to Core 2 Duo that made every developer seemingly assume overnight that they had access to multiple processors.
I haven’t even owned a Windows-based PC in 10 years and I’m on the market for a liquid cooled GTX 1080Ti and AMD Threadripper — guess what is old is new again. Fun times!
I'm less skeptical than the other responders. VRChat in particular has been quite a viral sensation with a few popular memes, and a lot of twitch.tv activity.
VR is what got me to build my own PC after a decade of exclusive mac use.
Immediate business expensing courtesy of the US tax changes.
HP + Dell added 1.7 million units vs the prior year. A substantial boost for them.
From April:
"Tax Windfall Going to Capex Way Faster Than Stock Buybacks"
"Among the 130 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results in this earnings season, capital spending increased by 39 percent, the fastest rate in seven years, data compiled by UBS AG show."
There is an extraordinary amount of full employment at the moment in 'b*s4it jobs', those pointless jobs that don't really matter but somehow exist. Small to medium sized businesses just bloat out with these positions over time and only a harsh recession means that these jobs get systematically culled. With these jobs you need yet another PC. You can't buy fancy laptops as there is status value in those things and a PC is as glorified as a phone on the desk of someone doing one of these make-believe-jobs of inane pointlessness. Demand for stationary cupboard supplies is probably also up 1.4% with BIC taking a few sales from PaperMate in an otherwise flat market.
This is the sort of headline you get when the housing market needs a 'boost'. Anecdotally you may know that nobody has been able to buy/sell for ages and that prices are not going up, however, some survey that is independent but paid for buy a building society/bank comes out to give the impression that the market is moving again.
The Update in the story cites another report where the numbers for HP and Lenovo are different, so the headline 1.4% is margin of error, not a genuine sign of a market on the move.
Is it in the developing world? Mobile is very limited due to small devices and more importantly crippled by design OSes. I've thought for a while that mobile's adoption in the developing world would be a gateway drug for computing and that PC adoption would follow after wages rise and/or PC prices drop.
Most people in developing world use mobile devices purely for communication and music/videos, i don't think that these uses will drive rise of PC usage.
Following the source chain back to Gartner their conclusion on the data was:
"PC shipment growth in the second quarter of 2018 was driven by demand in the business market, which was offset by declining shipments in the consumer segment. In the consumer space, the fundamental market structure, due to changes on PC user behavior, still remains, and continues to impact market growth. Consumers are using their smartphones for even more daily tasks, such as checking social media, calendaring, banking and shopping, which is reducing the need for a consumer PC. In the business segment, PC momentum will weaken in two years when the replacement peak for Windows 10 passes. PC vendors should look for ways to maintain growth in the business market as the Windows 10 upgrade cycle tails off."
I think it’s a blip caused by people upgrading their cpu due to spectre and meltdown. Not always because their cpu may be exposed but also as an excuse.
Or Macbook/iMac prices. My desktop has been a Hackintosh for the last 7 years. When my 5-year-old Macbook Pro dies I'll be looking for a Hackintoshable PC laptop.
[+] [-] ksec|7 years ago|reply
Many years ago people thought console would take over gaming. And it turns out Keyboard and Mouse are irreplaceable for certain type of games. You may never play PSE or FIFA on your PC any more, but many more strategy games, Online Games, FPS are still on PC. And as generation of people who grew up in gaming, there is ever increasing number of people on Twitch or other E-Sport streaming site.
Unfortunately Apple thinks Gaming is a waste of time. And therefore Mac doesn't really cater for Games Developers. iOS Gaming is still a result of iOS popularity rather then Apple making it better. We can used to argue PC gaming is niche, for nerds, Riva TNT, 3Dfx, Rage 128, Radeon, Geforce.....
Now PC Gaming is no longer a small communities, and will continue to grow into much larger in the years to come.
[+] [-] nkkollaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway333444|7 years ago|reply
Consider the following: 1) Per user revenue in iOS out paces per user revenue in Android by so much that many titles make more on iOS than they do on Android despite Android having ~70% of the market
2) Apples hardware & os provide superior performance relative to even premium Android phones despite Apples compulsion towards thinner. (This is largely due to vulkans infancy compared to the relative maturity of metal)
3) fragmentation
4) walled garden is actually a plus for developers who worry about apk sharing
5) Apples store does business in China making Apple a one stop shop for the world whereas android requires at least one separate partner just for China.
Note: Please pardon any grammar, spelling, & formatting errors due to this response originating from a mobile device
[+] [-] hrktb|7 years ago|reply
Once there’s enough money to be made, publishers will tackle any issue there is to move a genre to the bigger audience.
That doesn’t mean for me that PC gaming will fade away, just that it will stay a limited market where makers will experiment more freely than on the other marketplaces.
[+] [-] gear54rus|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] raverbashing|7 years ago|reply
It's 1.4% growth of something that was going downhill for a while already, so it might not be too impactful
[+] [-] lozf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aioprisan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Joeri|7 years ago|reply
The consumer market can still drop further though. Most people are fine using ipads, and probably even better off than with a laptop when all things are considered.
[+] [-] nailer|7 years ago|reply
Includes both laptops and desktops
[+] [-] agumonkey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juusto|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zealotux|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foepys|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kowdermeister|7 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1920&bi...
[+] [-] gallerdude|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] terminalcommand|7 years ago|reply
Among my friends in their 20s, most of them want to build a PC. It could be the case that my generation didn't experience the growth and the decline of the PC market and we don't appreciate the value of laptops yet. The hype for building a custom PC certainly exists.
But from a consumer's standpoint, I also think laptops win in most cases.
Correction: Thanks to the reply, I noticed that "PC Market" statistics included both Laptops and Desktop PCs. I am leaving this post as is, as it represents my ideas on why there is still a -possibly growing?- interest for desktop PCs.
[+] [-] babaganoosh89|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingdave|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cat199|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IloveHN84|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdsa5325|7 years ago|reply
Business orders are likely driving the growth.
[+] [-] rolleiflex|7 years ago|reply
I haven’t even owned a Windows-based PC in 10 years and I’m on the market for a liquid cooled GTX 1080Ti and AMD Threadripper — guess what is old is new again. Fun times!
[+] [-] dominostars|7 years ago|reply
VR is what got me to build my own PC after a decade of exclusive mac use.
[+] [-] ianlevesque|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|7 years ago|reply
HP + Dell added 1.7 million units vs the prior year. A substantial boost for them.
From April:
"Tax Windfall Going to Capex Way Faster Than Stock Buybacks"
"Among the 130 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results in this earnings season, capital spending increased by 39 percent, the fastest rate in seven years, data compiled by UBS AG show."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-26/trump-tax...
[+] [-] arenaninja|7 years ago|reply
I'm unsure whether those units are counted as part of the PC market
[+] [-] foepys|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|7 years ago|reply
There is an extraordinary amount of full employment at the moment in 'b*s4it jobs', those pointless jobs that don't really matter but somehow exist. Small to medium sized businesses just bloat out with these positions over time and only a harsh recession means that these jobs get systematically culled. With these jobs you need yet another PC. You can't buy fancy laptops as there is status value in those things and a PC is as glorified as a phone on the desk of someone doing one of these make-believe-jobs of inane pointlessness. Demand for stationary cupboard supplies is probably also up 1.4% with BIC taking a few sales from PaperMate in an otherwise flat market.
This is the sort of headline you get when the housing market needs a 'boost'. Anecdotally you may know that nobody has been able to buy/sell for ages and that prices are not going up, however, some survey that is independent but paid for buy a building society/bank comes out to give the impression that the market is moving again.
The Update in the story cites another report where the numbers for HP and Lenovo are different, so the headline 1.4% is margin of error, not a genuine sign of a market on the move.
[+] [-] api|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xfer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nobrains|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zamadatix|7 years ago|reply
"PC shipment growth in the second quarter of 2018 was driven by demand in the business market, which was offset by declining shipments in the consumer segment. In the consumer space, the fundamental market structure, due to changes on PC user behavior, still remains, and continues to impact market growth. Consumers are using their smartphones for even more daily tasks, such as checking social media, calendaring, banking and shopping, which is reducing the need for a consumer PC. In the business segment, PC momentum will weaken in two years when the replacement peak for Windows 10 passes. PC vendors should look for ways to maintain growth in the business market as the Windows 10 upgrade cycle tails off."
[+] [-] untog|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FollowSteph3|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woranl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cutler|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foepys|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ordu|7 years ago|reply