The PC is dead. Gartner wishes you luck, vendors

Do gamers even buy PCs though? I never met anyone who did. They're too fussy about picking the exact components, especially GFX card, low latency RAM, and storage, to just grab something off the shelf.

"The high-end, purpose-built gaming PC segment (for example, $1,000 or more) is where PC vendors should focus for long-term profitability, despite this segment's competitiveness," said Tsai.

Shame a large percentage of that target audience tend to build their own then.

Well, if Gartner says it's pretty much dead, then it's either totally dead or there will be a renaissance.

Since it's a Gartner Report

That more or less guarantees that the PC market is about to quintuple in size in the next 3 years.

"Ultramobile premium"

For Garner that probably means "Ultrabooks" which are huge slaps of a laptop... for some reason optimized to be thin. That's not portable. A portable device would be like a Palmtop.

Also all we are seeing right now is the "home computer" crowd moving towards tablets and "smart"phones. Those are the people who used to have traditional home computers and TV-sets connected to them. As PCs became cheaper, they moved to them, causing in part the "Windows Boom" in the 1990s. Now they move away from that market. What is left are more professional users, people who want to actually work with their computers...

and those people don't care about pre-loaded crap. They want to have the operating system they want, not whatever Microsoft considers fashionable at the time.

Hmm, seems to be confusing meeeeelions with BEEEELIONS in this article.

The little hand held jobs will never replace the PC. The reasons for the loss of sales is not just people buying mobs to view facebook. In the early days of computing, people often upgraded every 2 years because they needed additional computer power and features to do their jobs. I remember upgrading from an old 8086 computer to a 286 because the 286 had 4 meg of memory and a 80 meg hard drive and was much faster. I upgraded my 286 for a 486 because the 486 had windows 3.10 (a gui which made things easier to do), and a 160 meg hard drive. Right now, my computer does anything I need it to do. It has a stable operating system (Linux) and I have little need to upgrade. Likewise corporations are less likely to upgrade every two years because 1. their existing system does everything that the corporation needs to have done. With extensive investment in software,it would be very costly to upgrade to a new set of computers and operating system and their would be little to show for it. Just a few thoughts

there is a lot more to a computer than just Surfing the Internet And games. I for one do word processing, Accounting, photo editing, CAD work, and some software development. Whereas some of these things can be done with the laptop, The speed and graphics of a laptop is still not fast enough for some things. And tablet computers are good for the field,but I don't know of anyone who wants to do CAD work on them. and as far as the touchscreen goes unless you need the exercise, a mouse is much more efficient. Especially on a large screen. I don't know of anyone who would want to use a 21 inch touchscreen setting on the desktop for very long. It's fine for the movies and TV shows, but in real life It's just not feasible.

I think the market has just been saturated with good desktops. and with the economy as it is, They are not replacing them as quickly. Also the innovation in computing has slowed in some cases hitting a brick wall. New technology has to be developed that can and should replace the older technology. And I'm not talking about some hyped up piece of garbage that is presented as new technology. Most people that I know, would rather use a desktop computer than a tablet or phone for There general work.

I can remember hearing about the demise of the desktop computer when the laptops came out. It has not happen yet. there's a niche that each technology holds in the marketplace. And there is a need for the desktop computer, and there will be for several more years at least.

As long as you didn't have to stare at a shitty small screen like the mobile has in general I wouldn't care about the PC. However, as long as no-one creates a set of modular machines that I can grid for extra processing power when I need it to drive some compute intensive task, gives me the option to use a decent keyboard and screen, I don see my DIM machine leave my desktop any time soon. In fact it direly needs an upgrade on many levels except for the software. Linux certainly covers all my needs and to my experience does a far better job at it these days than any commercial OS I ever used. The case for Open Source and Open Standards is pretty much set for me.

If any manufacturer would ever start building hardware that you can easily extend and upgrade without the hassle of having to pull out wires and unscrew things while at the same time keeping the old stuff useful for cannibals like me, they'd have a winner in at least the self builder market. It would also allow an easier entry for the IoT if all those gadgets could do a tad more than just make coffee, but would add something more to the mix than just pointing out the thing is empty and needs a refill.

The same bloody thing has happened with the smart phone. A machine more powerful than my old Pentium machines ever where and it is limited to do just a few things, is a bitch to upgrade and if you try and run a more useful OS on it runs out of power rather fast. So it will probably need some docking station for power if you want to grid it, but that could make a rather nice new type of rack mount.

And no, I don believe in cloud computing that I see pretty much as the new thin client model with better connections that will still fail regularly leaving you with a blank screen. Nor is large part of the world ready for anything like it. The mobile drive has shown that people want their compute power close to them and easily portable with some measure of possession of their data. Is it really that hard to get a grip on that concept?

Times have changed

I spent a grand (through a staff purchase scheme) on a top spec i7 PC, two GFX cards, and three delightful monitors.

I won't be buying a new PC ever again.

PCs are no longer the first or only devices users are choosing for internet access

It would be if Windows 7 was still available in retail stores.

Consider the nonsense of buying a desktop for your home

Let us do the mental experiment of thinking that mobile internet is cheap and that games, messaging, E-Mail, telephone, video and internet access are all available in a portable device in your pocket, wherever you are and whenever you need.

Why would any sensible consumer in that case invest in a device that mostly sits at home and relies on a physical cable for internet connection? Why would one even need a print-out? Other than home professionals or hobbyists, I cannot imagine a future for the home pc.

Even for companies it's the applications that are keeping PCs alive and I would expect that the applications will also shift to a more platform-agnostic paradigm, eventually.

The topic is dramatic PC sales declines

It is noticeable that all the comments by PC Gamer systems DIY-ers, nor wishes that Gartner should die, has no relevance what-so-ever to the "fact" that PC sales have experienced dramatic loses for over 5 years now, and Gartner is only one of several Tech research firms to report " the exact same" results.

All the gaming PC building in the world will not reverse such substantive PC sales declines, and trashing Gartner - and therefore all those credible firms/organizations with same report - is infantile, and shows that Windows anal supporters just don't deal with reality.

Get a new life!

IMHO,the reason that PC sales slumped globally is pretty obvious,the 'global' downturn.

Knowing Microsoft,with their 'more money than sense' attitude,it would NOT have occurred to them,that a global 'downturn' = less disposable income globally,therefore prices ought to fall,in order to maintain sales at the cost of reduced profits.

That is plain common sense, maintain sales revenue,keep tightening up on cost overheads & hope for increasing market share in a shrinking global business pool until the global 'recovery'.

In the UK, utility companies fleece the consumer, 'regulators' are bought & paid for by the utility companies along with Ministers in government.

That's the logical explanation for government indifference to utility price increasesm, that depress consumer spending, prolonging 'austerity' & reducing consumer spending from less disposable income.

As for replacing my PC rig, I have always assembled my own,I still have,as well as intend to keep my current rig for years to come.

It's comprised of a an ASUS Z77 Sabertooth mobo,3770K cpu,16GB Corsair Vengenace LP RAM, x1 INTEL 530 -240GB SSD,x2 INTEL 530 120GB SSD's & Nvidia GTX670 GPU.

It's really quick,it boots W7 64bit in 5 sec's flat,plays any game at good frame rates with no lag.

In addition,my EIZO FlexScan HD2441W displays top notch graphics,it cost £950 & was worth every penny I spent on it nearly 10 years ago.

I have troubleshooted hundreds of computers for people over the years, I find that a lack of regular maintenance & 'tuning-up' is a major factor in 'slow' running computers,as are app's like AV,which 'hog' resources.

Again,WINDOWS itself eats up drive space,with updates taking more than the O.S itself.

Any really 'old' laptop\desktop will benefit from a properly set up Linux distro to give a new lease of life.

"...$850 for an entry-level gaming PC notebook..."

I know Solitaire's a game but come on...

"Gartner reckons by 2019, it'll be the largest segment of the PC market in revenue terms, account for just under $58m in revenue." Is this an actual statement by Gartner? Just under $58m? Not much at all. If an accurate prediction, how much revenue does the rest of the PC market generate?

What mind-altering substances are used by Gartner to create these fantasies? It was apparent that the last Gartner report was paid for by Microsoft. This one? Paid for by Verizon? Sheesh!

Hmmmmm...

I'm not quite sold on convergence replacing the desktop just yet. Or ever actually.

Try loading Mastercam on your phone. Let's pretend it's possible. Now set up a part with some complex topography and close tolerances, set your rough and finish tools and tell it to render the toolpath with tolerance comparisons on. Watch your processor briefly turn into a ball of plasma.

Go buy a desktop and a Quadro.

The big PCs are not going anywhere.

Disclaimer : I'm not our resident Mcam guy. I just put together the desktop for him after he showed me what his job was like on the company supplied - new model, not crap - laptop. The render times went from 50minutes to 5 minutes.

Am I reading this right?

"Shipments of PCs have sunk over the last five years - in revenue terms, not literally - from 343 million units in 2012 to an estimated 232 million units in 2016. Escherich stated: "In terms of revenue, the global PC market has contracted from $219m in 2012 to an expected $137m in 2016.""

So for 2016 estimated shipments of 232 million PCs will only generate revenue of 137 million bucks? - about 60 cents per PC? No wonder they're in trouble, or I've missed something.

PC Use

I'm a network engineer and I have been in the field for a long time.

As usual, Gartner states the obvious trends that anybody can see and detect, then they try to inject their opinion on things. I have never been impressed with Gartner Group.

PC's are a lot more functional that smart phones and tablets. In fact, only the very young kids are obsessed with those smart phones and tablets, because they don't know any better (but they are learning).

Smartphones and tablets take CONTROL out of the hand of the user, and put it in the hands of Google or Apple, or maybe Microsoft. They dictate what apps can be on your phone, and if they don't like it, they uninstall it remotely; even if you OWN the phone, all because you were stupid enough to go along with their contract.

This trend is becoming more and more common, but that does not mean the PC market is dead.

I prefer a PC over smartphone, or tablet any day, and if I can't use software that remains under MY control, then I don't use it. In fact, I don't use my smartphone for anything other than phone calls, and I'm looking to find otherways to make phone calls also.

I run exclusively Linux on my desktops at home and at office, all because of corporate and government overreach. If by chance the PC market dies, I will stick to Rasberry PI.

In summary, a lot of companies are losing out on a lot of business and all they need to do is remember that many of us are willing to pay, as long as everything remains in OUR control.

It's retail, stupid

I've made this point before ad nauseam, but in Europe, PC manufacturers, distributors and retailers can't do retail. So ignoring the corporate market for the moment, they are getting what was coming to them.

Apple excepted, go into a shop to buy a computer and you'll be greeted by a jumble sale of indistinguishable flotsam, sold by a desultory clan of kids with fantastical advice. Model ranges are both hopelessly fragmented and underrepresented (there'll be ten models there, but not the one you want). The shit screens and keyboard layouts you saw five years ago on laptops are still there. The machines are still noisy. They still have infuriating layout quirks, too few ports, breakable DC jacks, and shiny screens. They are reliably ugly - especially the ones trying to stand out by not being a grey box.

Online, the experience is probably worse.

Not being in the market for an Apple, which exhibits only some of this incompetence (keyboards and ports), I literally can't find anything to buy. So I go home and buy some components to upgrade what I have.

It doesn't matter that people don't need PCs. I don't need a(nother) PC. I'm still trying, unsuccessfully, to buy one. People don't need new bicycles or cars or food mixers either. Those markets were saturated 30 years ago, but no-one's talking about the bottom falling out of them. A clue is that those things are designed, marketed and retailed properly.

This problem is self inflicted at the retail end of the market.

I think soo many people disagree with this article.

I just would like to say I am totally annoyed by everyone who seems to reference Apple products as a best in class type of device. Apple is a malicious dictating company that intelligently develops technology to lock users into and outof their platforms and to control and manipulate their users and developer community. There computers and peripherals are terrifically over priced, poor in performance and are built to be un-upgradable and unmaintainable. Getting down to the point, from personal experience, Apple Computers are the biggest pieces of crap I've ever seen, Apple being such a malipulative company for the computer ignorant and illiterate.

IMO as a programmer, the two best pieces of equipment is my desktop and my laptop computers. There fast, upgradable, have large screens with tactile keyboards. I love my smartphone, but it sure ain't replacing my desktop.