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back to article Analyst cuts PC sales forecast, blames iPad

Market watcher Gartner has pruned its forecast world personal computer sales growth this year and next, knocking nearly four percentage points off its 2010 prediction. The reason? The iPad. And, to be fair, other such media tablets, though the Apple offering has been the key seller in 2010. In September, Gartner forecast that …

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  1. Ryan Barrett

    Not sure I agree with them..

    It wouldn't be because there isn't a compelling reason to upgrade a 3-4 year old PC anymore, because most things work 'just fine'?

    Netbooks sold like crazy a couple of years ago, and they're *REAL* slow compared to my 3 year old mid-low end PC.

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    1. ttuk
      Reply Icon

      malware.. and consumer lazyness / ignorance

      "there isn't a compelling reason to upgrade a 3-4 year old PC anymore"

      Whilst I'd agree with that statement for the average reg reader, for the average joe on the street after 3-4 years their laptop running windows is so full of bloat / malware and the disk so fragmented that it runs like an absoloute slug..

      A mate of mine had a 2 or 3 year old acer laptop that he'd decided needed replacing since he'd picked up a virus.. I took a look at it and came to the conclusion that while his windoze installation was pretty much screwed to the point that it needed abandoning, a clean install of windows or any linux distro would render it fully functional again.. I offered to restore it for him (for free) but he decided he wanted to buy a new laptop anyway and I got a free computer.

      As far as I can tell while his new machine has more ram, a faster processor, decent battery and is a bit lighter / shinier I doubt it really is £400 worth of improvement in performance on his old machine (with a clean non bloated OS) for surfing the web / emailing, skyping and watching downloaded movies on.

      In a way I think microsoft is happy about the amount of malware on machines because so many consumers would rather just buy a new machine (and therefore new windows license too) rather than fix / pay someone to fix the one they've got.

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      1. Goat Jam
        Reply Icon
        Paris Hilton

        Yep

        Can't tell you how many times this has happened over the years.

        Luser: "I need a new PC, this one is too slow"

        Me: "<clicky-click> You just need to reload your Windows, it happens all the time. I can do it for you if you like."

        Luser: "I'll think about it"

        <time passes>

        Me: "How is that PC going anyway?"

        Luser: "Oh, that? I decided to buy a new one"

        I gave up on this a few years back. It's simply not worth the trouble. I might offer to put Linux on there instead depending on their relationship to me but when it comes to Windoze they are on their own.

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  2. JEDIDIAH
    Linux

    meh I say!

    Well, it could be that netbooks and PCs represent saturated markets with not a lot of real growth potential. These classes of machine already sell in numbers that dwarf the iPad or Mac. There's not quite so much room for relative improvement in these classes of machines anymore.

    On the one hand, many people don't fully exploit the potential of PC hardware. On the other hand, regular PCs can be upgraded if they are just a little out of date. You don't have to toss the whole thing (like a Mac).

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  3. James Hughes 1

    Recession?

    Nothing to do with that then? Companies and individuals less likely to spend money in an uncertain economic climate perhaps?

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  4. MrT

    Gartner have always been the masters of the bleedin obvious

    "Don't install this OS until the first service pack is out" has always been their equivalent of "rain falls downwards" or "snow is cold" in news terms. Now they're on "People are buying iPads, not enough money to buy two" are they?

    As for upgrading - PCs haven't moved on much in the last 4 years - my Dell Inspiron 9400 laptop was specced up with dedicated graphics and a 1900x1220 17" screen. I've upgraded the HDD (WD Scorpio Blue 500GB SATA300), and the RAM (4GB Kingston HyperX - yes, 4GB works fine in a PC that Dell only say supports 2GB, after BIOS A08 release at least). Thing is, those are pretty easy upgrades and came in at about £120 for both, which is way less than buying a new gaming-spec laptop.Add buying the full version of W7 on pre-release for £45 and it's been economical to keep up to date. This is coming up to 4 years old and still scores 5.1/7.9 in the Windows 7 performance index (not the best benchmark, I know).

    It's not just that - I bought another Dell (budget-end desktop this time) about a year ago - it cost £20 to spec a bigger HDD and £45 to double the RAM to 8GB. The CPU is quad-core and the only thing that lets it down is the budget-end ATI graphics card. If I swapped that for something more up-spec it'd cost about the same as my upgrades on the older laptop. It's the ease of upgrade and relative effectiveness of these, combined with the majority of tasks being easily within the average PC's capabilities, that are the reason why PCs are not being replaced every two years.

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  5. stucs201
    WTF?

    what "dip in consumer interest in PCs"?

    They're still predicting a growth of 14.something% or 30odd million *more* than last year. Sounds like an increase in interest to me!

    This sort of nonsense interpretation is the sort of thing I'd expect from the sort of share-dealing types who panic needlessly and cause the recession they're afraid of:

    Dealer 1: "Help, my companies are going to make less than last year"

    Dealer 2: "I'm in trouble too, mine are making more, but not as much as I forecast"

    Warren Buffet: "Mine are still making money, here let me use some of it to take those profitable companies off your hand at a bargain price".

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