back to article Hybrid Windows laptop-slash-tablet fails to halt toilet-bound PC market

The PC market may be in decline, but demand for hybrid laptop-cum-tablets will nearly double this year and again next, market-watcher Gartner has forecast. Validation for Intel’s new approach to notebook computers then? Not quite. While Gartner reckons some 18,598,000 “ultramobile PCs” will have shipped during 2013, almost …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "toilet-bound PC market"

    I note that sales of OS-X systems have declined far more than PC sales.....imo this is more a symptom of the state of the economy,

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Don't ignore the product cycle

      Apple is much more sensitive to product cycles than the PC market, because a lot of people know when Apple's PCs/laptops are getting long in the tooth and are soon to be updated. Apple doesn't announce the date ahead of time, but anyone interested can see the range of guesses/rumors months in advance, and put 2+2 together from the date when Intel starts volume shipments of the low power version of certain CPUs.

      The PC market is much less sensitive to this because there are so many OEMs that new models are released almost every week. You don't go a year or longer with nothing new as you often do in the Apple world between refreshes. If PC OEMs only introduced new models when Intel updates their CPUs you'd see the same cycles there, but they don't.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hybrid laptop-cum-tablets demand

    Demand for laptops with decent resolution (rather than 1376 x 768), with matte screen (as opposed to that glossy crap put on everything currently), low weight, and decent battery ... for a fair price ... would likely take off, if only these manufacturers would fill the requirement.

    1. Quxy
      Pint

      Re: hybrid cum-tablets demand

      ...and don't forget water resistance and easy washability!

    2. JDX Gold badge

      Re: hybrid laptop-cum-tablets demand

      Yeah, they'd sell more Ferraris if they put the price down to £50k too. It's about as likely.

  3. andreas koch
    Thumb Up

    I've got it.

    IBM's Tom Watson was right. There's a need for 5* computers worldwide. The rest are very happy having CCDs (Content Consumption Devices).

    Half the "users" have a computer because . . . , well, because. Others are gamers. And then there's some that actually have an advantage using one instead of the way it was done before.

    But some of the uses are only there because the computer is there. Like my kid's old school, which switched to iPads to register the kids. Lots of times the teachers had to make notes on paper to hack it in later because something didn't work. The old book would have done just as well.

    *OKOKOK, it's more than 5, but he was part right; it's not the gazillion computing devices we have in use now.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "That total, says Gartner, is 184,431,000. That’s almost 10 tablets for every ultramobile shipped. Most of these tablets run Android, some run iOS."

    We don't need no steekin anal(yst) to tell us. 90% of us who used a PC, did so for internet access (an a smaller number for PC gaming [yawn]. You don't need to spend a shed load on a PC anymore when a cheap tablet does what you want it to do.

    Microsoft need to be offering tablets at much lower prices to try to capture the PC market again.

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