IDC’s latest report on Personal Computer sales (and yes, that includes Macs) is out and it’s a grim read. Sales of traditional desktop computers dropped a steep -9.8%. The good news is, IDC was expecting sales to drop -10.1%. So um, yay?
IDC expects the downward trend to continue, due to a multitude of factors but it really does boil down to this: computers are not the only game in town anymore,. That even goes for what IDC and others condescendingly call “emerging markets”
“Emerging markets used to be a core driver of the PC market, as rising penetration among large populations boosted overall growth,” saidLoren Loverde, Vice President, Worldwide PC Trackers. “At the moment, however, we’re seeing emerging regions more affected by a weak economic environment as well as significant shifts in technology buying priorities. We do expect these regions to recover in the medium term and perform better than mature regions, but growth is expected to stabilize near zero percent, rather than driving increasing volumes as we saw in the past.”
Translation: Money is tight and people are going for the best bang for their buck, which is likely not going to be a desktop.
Ten years ago, if you wanted to get work done, your options were a desktop or laptop. PDAs were around, but those were meant to replace your daily planner and maybe jot some quick thoughts down. Smartphones existed, but they were either a muddled mess of too much (Windows Mobile), a glorified PDA with some phone functionality (Treo), or a jumped-up pager (BlackBerry). All three options were still largely tethered to a desk.
In the last few years, we’ve seen mobile devices that are truly mobile and do the majority of day-to-day tasks. There’s really no reason to log on to my desktop at home when I’ve already answered all my e-mail, edited a post for next week, taken and uploaded my photos, and watched the latest episodes of my favorite shows. Heck, I’ve written a ton of articles for this side on my “obsolete” HP TouchPad and ZAGG Flex Bluetooth keyboard.
Sure, tablets aren’t (yet) a viable option for most people doing CAD work, video/music editing, or serious photo work. The thing is, that’s a sub-set. General consumers are fine buying smartphones and tablets – especially when we have devices that blur the line like the Galaxy Note, LG G Pro, and HTC One Max. We’re even seeing it in those so-called “Emerging” markets, as companies HP and others have started pitching solutions like the VoiceTab line of tablets.
VoiceTab is a much better term than “Phablet”.
2014 was bad for PCs and 2015 will be bad – as long as you continue to narrowly define a computer as a thing that sits on a desk. It’s time to realize that we’ve reached the point where someone’s first computer is going to be a phone.
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