According to an article by Digitimes, PC shipments have taken another nose drive in the second quarter this year compared to last year to the tune of 10.9%. This keeps people begging the question of if this is the death of the PC? In the second quarter this year their was about 76 million PCs shipped from all the companies in the business. According the article this is the largest decline in the PC market in history. The numbers that this article is working off of come from Gartner‘s preliminary report.
“We are seeing the PC market reduction directly tied to the shrinking installed base of PCs, as inexpensive tablets displace the low-end machines used primarily for consumption in mature and developed markets,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “In emerging markets, inexpensive tablets have become the first computing device for many people, who at best are deferring the purchase of a PC. This is also accounting for the collapse of the mini notebook market.”
Reading this statement it does makes sense. Tablets and smart phones are easy to handle and doesn’t take alot of technical expertise to operate. While I personally could never get away from my desktop for gaming alone, the huge increase in developers starting to make games not just for desktop but for mobile platforms such as Android and iOS. One instance of this is three lead developers from EA that worked on SimCity has quit recently to form their own indie studio, Jellygrade. Now SimCity wasn’t a flop but had alot of issues at release. Jellygrade states on its front page that they are, “Hi there! We’re a few recovering ex-AAA game developers, now looking to make the kinds of games we love on mobile.” Now the relevance of this is they are jumping from desktop PC to mobile and increase what can be perceived as part of the death of the PC.
Now Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Lenovo are in a race to ship the most PCs. Currently Lenovo holds a slight lead over HP but it isn’t much to consider them the clear front runner. Lenovo holds a 16.7% market share while HP has 16.3% and then in a distant third is Dell with 11.8% market share. Below are the numbers from Gartner.
Death of the PC? Here are Gartner’s numbers
| Gartner: Worldwide PC shipment estimates by vendor, 2Q13 (unit) | |||||
| Company | 2Q13 shipments | 2Q13 market share | 2Q12 shipments | 2Q12 market share | Y/Y |
| Lenovo | 12,677,265 | 16.7% | 12,755,068 | 14.9% | (0.6%) |
| HP | 12,402,887 | 16.3% | 13,028,822 | 15.3% | (4.8%) |
| Dell | 8,984,634 | 11.8% | 9,349,171 | 11% | (3.9%) |
| Acer Group | 6,305,000 | 8.3% | 9,743,663 | 11.4% | (35.3%) |
| Asustek Computer | 4,590,071 | 6% | 5,772,043 | 6.8% | (20.5%) |
| Others | 31,041,130 | 40.8% | 34,675,824 | 40.6% | (10.5%) |
| Total | 76,000,986 | 100% | 85,324,591 | 100% | (10.9%) |
*Note: Data includes desktops and mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks (netbooks) but not media tablets such as the iPad.
Source: Gartner, compiled by Digitimes, July 2013
| Gartner: US PC shipment estimates by vendor, 2Q13 (unit) | |||||
| Company | 2Q13 shipments | 2Q13 market share | 2Q12 shipments | 2Q12 market share | Y/Y |
| HP | 3,957,761 | 26.4% | 3,976,041 | 26.2% | (0.5%) |
| Dell | 3,681,725 | 24.6% | 3,458,736 | 22.8% | 6.4% |
| Apple | 1,740,500 | 11.6% | 1,818,959 | 12% | (4.3%) |
| Lenovo | 1,515,562 | 10.1% | 1,266,109 | 8.3% | 19.7% |
| Toshiba | 848,984 | 5.7% | 1,006,900 | 6.6% | (15.7%) |
| Others | 3,230,717 | 21.6% | 3,659,220 | 24.1% | (11.7%) |
| Total | 14,975,249 | 100% | 15,185,965 | 100% | (1.4%) |
*Note: Data includes desktops and mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks (netbooks) but not media tablets such as the iPad.
Source: Gartner, compiled by Digitimes, July 2013
| Gartner: EMEA PC shipment estimates by vendor, 2Q13 (unit) | |||||
| Company | 2Q13 shipments | 2Q13 market share | 2Q12 shipments | 2Q12 market share | Y/Y |
| HP | 3,779,160 | 17.8% | 4,683,376 | 18.3% | (19.3%) |
| Lenovo | 2,641,622 | 12.4% | 2,180,362 | 8.5% | 21.2% |
| Acer Group | 2,456,255 | 11.5% | 3,995,518 | 15.6% | (38.5%) |
| Dell | 1,979,895 | 9.3% | 2,173,552 | 8.5% | (8.9%) |
| Asustek Computer | 1,743,345 | 8.2% | 2,670,268 | 10.4% | (34.7%) |
| Others | 8,675,143 | 40.8% | 9,864,285 | 38.6% | (12.1%) |
| Total | 21,275,420 | 100% | 25,567,361 | 100% | (16.8%) |
*Note: Data includes desktops and mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks (netbooks) but not media tablets such as the iPad.
Source: Gartner, compiled by Digitimes, July 2013
So basically all of this is just declining sales. I don’t think you can replace the PC anytime in the near future with tablets and smart phones with all the data entry jobs, hardcore gaming, or any job that requires extensive use of the PC is that you can’t use an iPad and be able to do the same amount of work. At one of my previous jobs they started switching us from Toshiba tough books to the iPad 1 and within 3 months they basically scraped the idea and had already purchases close to 30,000.
So what are your thoughts on the death of the PC?
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