PC Purchases Plummeting Perilously
Betting On A Windows 11 Hardware Refresh Was Unwise
The Register has news on the overall PC purchases and shipping for the latest quarter and it is not wonderful. Indeed it hasn’t been this bad since the 90’s; thankfully adjusted numbers and not less actual sales. It has been a rough four quarters for everyone but Apple, and that is only because their sales have slowed by a lesser margin than the competition. The supply chain bottlenecks may have been mostly resolved, but that has not been enough to help.
According to IDC, the market shrunk by 19.5% compared to this time last year, which was not exactly an awesome quarter by any means. IDC figures a total of 68 million computers were sent into the channel, and Canalys more or less agrees with their estimates being a 18% decline with 69.4 million PCs shipped. This will definitely have an effect on all companies bottom line, with AMD suggesting their sales may be $1.1 billion under expectation which is a fair chunk of last quarters $6.5 billion.
A part of this issue is the utter lack of interest in Windows 11 shown by businesses, and a lukewarm reception by consumers. A recent study found that just over half of the PCs currently being used have the hardware to support Windows 11 and with the current economic conditions that is unlikely to change quickly. There is hope that many of these systems only have a year or so of reliable operation, but Q2/Q3 2023 is a long way off.
Gartner says 68 million computers were sent into the channel in Q3, down 19.5 percent year-on-year in the steepest decline since the market watcher began crunching unit volumes in the mid-1990s.
More Tech News From Around The Web
- Microsoft: Support for Windows 10 21H1 ending in December @ Bleeping Computer
- Report: “Thousands” of Intel layoffs planned as PC demand slows and revenues fall @ Ars Technica
- Microsoft’s Surface Studio 2 Plus Ships With an RTX 3060 for $4,299 @ Slashdot
- Surface Pro 9 comes in both Intel and Arm flavors, absorbing the Surface Pro X @ Ars Technica
- If you’re wondering why Google blew $5b on Mandiant, this may shed some light @ The Register
- Meta Launches $1,4999 Quest Pro Headset @ Slashdot
- Google Reveals ‘First Laptops Built For Cloud Gaming’ Just After Killing Stadia @ Slashdot
“Hope” that our computers won’t last much longer? I’m staying on my 2600K
Well, seeing the price of new video cards you’re going to need to be wealthy in order to game – it wasn’t that long ago that you could purchase a high gaming system for around $1500-$2000. I just looked it up – 3 generations ago the price of a gtx 1080 was $600 and the gtx 1070 was $380. Don’t talk to me about inflation or how much “better” the new 4090/4080/4070 are going to be. What happened to entry level cards for less than $300 (or even $250) like the gtx 1060 and amd RX 590. They don’t exist in the last 3 generations for either company.
100% agree. I can’t come anywhere close to the original price targets on the Hardware Leaderboard anymore. Guess we’re just supposed to game on our phones now … oh wait.
So true. I feel AMD and Nvidia perhaps forget that consoles still exist. The record sales of Xbox and PS5 should worry them honestly. They do compete within same space for people’s time of entertainment, with largely overlapping pool of games, no matter how we beat the PC master race drum.
It used to be that everyone has a PC, monitor and peripherals already for other purpose, and between console and a decent GPU, I’m far better off with $300-400 GPU for gaming. These days, fewer people have this rigid need for desktop PC at home. Meanwhile, the price of a “medium range” PC alone can now get you a very good TV plus console. The inversion happened so quickly in past 3-5 years and it’s absurd. Once people switch away, they aren’t coming back quickly, if ever.
Staying on my X79, E5-2697 V2 and GTX 1080 ti.