Wednesday, January 9th 2013
2013 Could be a Difficult Year for the PC Industry: Analyst
Big tradeshows such as the International CES are often used as a benchmark to gauge which areas of consumer-technology are faring better than the other. Industry analyst DigiTimes observed that PC is riding the CES bus on an uncomfortable backseat, which is an indication that the year could be difficult for the PC industry in general.
According to the analyst, although PC makers are aggressively promoting their Windows 8 creations - notebooks, desktops, and dockable tablets, - TV, living-room web-enablement, is attracting the most attention. Why this spells a bad news to PC makers is that with web-browsing being the most popular PC usage activity, no longer needing a PC, and doing so on web-enabled TVs could pose a disruptive innovation for the PC. Also, the theme for 2013, with PC makers appears to be more of cutting prices, instead of new innovations.
Source:
DigiTimes
According to the analyst, although PC makers are aggressively promoting their Windows 8 creations - notebooks, desktops, and dockable tablets, - TV, living-room web-enablement, is attracting the most attention. Why this spells a bad news to PC makers is that with web-browsing being the most popular PC usage activity, no longer needing a PC, and doing so on web-enabled TVs could pose a disruptive innovation for the PC. Also, the theme for 2013, with PC makers appears to be more of cutting prices, instead of new innovations.
71 Comments on 2013 Could be a Difficult Year for the PC Industry: Analyst
The global economy is truly in a recession right now. People simply cannot afford luxury stuff like PCs. I get so many comments from other parents locally, and they all say the same thing:
"How can you afford to have four kids?"
:banghead:
The house I live in now, 6 years ago would have cost $175k. Today, it's appraised at $475k.
If you want to buy a house here in Canada, you need a 15% down payment. For $475k, that's nearly $75k.
I bought my first house nearly 15 years ago with $4k in cash in my pocket.
That inflation is killer, and I live in the one country that apparently wasn't too affected by the recent global economic problems. I say that's BS, because if we haven't been affected, and this is going on, I cannot imagine how bad it is elsewhere.
As to the PC situation, not having enough money hasn't stopped anyone. Half of those dumbasses with the latest iphone/ipad/galaxy Siii, etc... either have them on a loan or on a contract.
Not being able to afford something isn't keeping people from buying anyway.
there is very little money, and people are desperate for work, its cheaper to eat 3x a day at Mc Donalds than to make an actual meal and thats not just for one person but 4-5 ppl together.
and lets face it a PC is very much a luxury item, but then so too is that big ass 50 inch flat screen tv the major difference is ppl can go without the PC aka smartphone etc but oh boy now my TV can surf the web offer me netflix etc it becomes a cheaper easy to market product when PCs havent really changed. PCs have lost the wow awesome factor they had years ago making them a harder sell in a tough economy.
In the end the economy is not improving its in flux stable but its certainly not getting any better. with weak economy and only weak jobs that offer $7.50 an hour which after taxes drop you down to $5 no ones buying jack shit at list where i am. And i know my region is in better shape than many others at least there IS WORK HERE.
It is one of the reason that I turned down the offer, they were only going to give me 14.4k for housing a year.
essentialy in my state you dont need to be smart to make a living you just have to be willing to cripple yourself before you hit 50 lol
gamers buy PC.
but everybody else use all flavour of pad's... much more enjoyable...
i prefer it that way... instead of buying 299 crap-o-rific laptop.. they buy pad's
and serious worker and also gamers buy pc. i was bound to append..
This is very apparent in Intels case, who has gained ground ahead of AMD. Intel essentially became its own competitor when the price started to outweigh the actual gain in performance from an upgrade. I'll rather stick to my i7-940 than burn a hole in my bank account for two extra cores.
Remember when laptops would make desktops obsolete 5 yrs ago and that's the only thing people would own?
Remember when netbooks would do the same thing to both laptops and desktops 2 yrs ago?
Hell, I remember WebTV LMAO.
I also remember when they unconvincingly lied about the housing market and economy for years (and still are).
I don't know a single person that really uses any functions on their smart TV. It's all marketing.
Most of these new devices are very expensive and people simply cannot afford them.
There's a reason why the Nexus series are incredibly popular - price! So, yeah, the OEMs are focusing correctly on lowering the cost of products.
Bottom line is that economy is an indication of how well PCs will sell, not how "crappy" they are in comparison to devices that CANNOT fill the same role.
People will always buy a shiny new device at the onset, then demand will wane when their pockets are empty and marketing wears off.
Analysts make money off trading stocks from the BS they spew. Stop listening to them.
There's a few reputable analysts, but they're not the ones you're going to be reading news about.
How about stopping the HDD price fixing, thereby reducing costs of PCs/peripherals and increasing demand (people want more storage)?
Perhaps the morons (like HP) will learn something about wasting all their money on useless buyouts (Palm Lulz) and partnering with intel on crap.
What the headline should say is that PC manuf. will no longer be able to make high profits off cheap hardware without doing any work.
Tablet: Check!
People use a PC to check twitter and facebook gossip.
Tablet: Check!
People love laptops because they are mobile.
Tablet: Check!
The second they can get console port GPU performance into a tablet for cheap its over for the PC mass market. PC's are the next ham radios. Render farms are whats next because tablets can do EVERYTHING except gaming and rendering that people need done on a PC or laptop. If you buy a desktop today for just surfing the web, email, bank account status and a little facebook you are an idiot. THAT is what most people use a tablet for.
I don't need any analyst to tell me that sales are hurting everywhere. I paid my power, heat, and phone bill yesterday afternoon, and that cost me $1200 all together.
And it'll cost me that again next month. Actually, it'll probably be more, since it's been warm, hovering around 0c.
I have more money than ever before, but, everything costs more. The PC industry, overall, has not increased it's pricing. There are still products at all these price points that have existed for the last 10 years. The only thing that has changed is that you get more grunt for the same dollar.
The industry itself has not changed with the rest of the world, and it's finally caught up to them. The fact tech OEMs have gone from bi-yearly platform releases to annual releases, the fact that Windows is also now a yearly thing, says for more than any analyst can.
If these companies hadn't started releasing products so often, they'd not have made sales, and you'd have heard all this three years ago.
:p
:rockout:
It's funny you say that about console GPU quality tablets, because a tablet will run circles around an Xbox 360 all day. Now all they need is the development horsepower behind it.