Knew it!
MSFT baaaad!
The abacus-shufflers of analyst firm IDC have revised their 2016 PC sales forecasts downwards. The firm now says PC shipments “... are forecast to decline by 7.3% year over year”. That's “roughly two per cent below earlier projections as conditions have been weaker than expected.” The firm names “weak currencies, depressed …
The headline is that the PC market is shrinking. MSFT is mostly a software company, going through a transition to compete with free. Requiring a 8GHz 64 core CPU and 4 graphics cards was not going to drive another hardware refresh and repurchase of software licenses. PCs have been fast enough for years, and people were going to stick with what the have even if the next version of Word had to do real time VR rendering of clippy swimming through a burning aquarium while you type.
MSFT's future revenue will be your choice of ads or a rental fee to block the irritating and disruptive adverts. Shrinking PC yearly sales does not matter if the installed base keeps growing from longer PC life times. What will matter is the rate at which desktop tasks become phone tasks and if Office for Android becomes a popular product.
I fear that the El Reg subbies are being their usual mischevious selves with that subheading. The writing was very clearly on the wall for the PC market before Win 10 was even in beta and the first signs that the tablet market was slowing down had also been spotted (we are of course now seeing the same thing in the phone market ). Indeed that is entirely unsurprising. All markets reach maturity sooner or later and that is what we are seeing now. The refresh cycle in the private retail market is probably nearer 5 years than 3 and that is no surprise. Before the advent of the smartphone and the tablet the tech that the average person owned consisted of their home pc and the dumb-phone they carried with them. The situation you have now is that three major pieces of tech purchase are competing for the customers money - hardly surprising that the profile in these markets has changed.
I think that VR might just manage to create a bit of an upswing in the next couple of years, depending on how well it's taken up and the availability of applications that don't just involve head-shots for example.
To help things along AMD's latest 'consumer' graphics card is apparently going to be $199 and it hits the mark of VR readiness - that is a major shot in the arm for the VR industry.
Although by the time it gets to blighty that will be £200, a bit like the NVIDIA 1080 is retailing around £550 in the UK and $600 in the US :(
I might have a go at the shop with a console that does VR, but it's value in anything other than gaming is totally lost on me. I appreciated the earlier comment about Clippy-VR. Most people are paid to get shit done, not have an "immersive experience." Then, when they are done working, most people have real lives to contend with.
"when they are done working, most people have real lives to contend with."
I can certainly appreciate this aspect of the VR challenge.
When I were a lad, I dreamt of having an immersive VR spaceship exploration experience.
Right now I could go out and build a kick-ass rig and play ED - I could even splash out for a real doozy chair to spend days in (built in commode etc.) - but that doesn't get the roof fixed or the patio cover built :(
So I haven't even upgraded my rig yet. However, with these cheaper VR ready cards and (once the second Gen headsets are out) cheaper headsets I might just take a punt on it for those few hours a week I might get to have a go. There might be a lot of people in that position - where large $£$£ expenditure vs time to use it isn't adding up - so cheaper kit that offers up a useable experience is bound to be a game changer.
Just my 2p though, ymmv. After all, everyone said tablets were a fad (including me) and since I got one about 3 months ago it's always nearby. Most useful aspect is not having to get out of my chair to look something up when required during a conversation with my wife - not exactly killer-app territory but it's very useful/convenient.
"
but it's value in anything other than gaming is totally lost on me
"
VR has great potential in all sorts of design (CAD) applications. Designing a complex mechanical part where not only do all the bits have to fit together, but must also be able to be assembled and disassembled would be far easier if you could manipulate everything in virtual space.
Not to mention something as mundane as re-designing your living room layout without actually having to hump heavy furniture from place to place until SWMBO is happy, only to discover that it is then impossible to reach your curtains when you want to close them.
"Most people are paid to get shit done,.."
Productive stuff has not stopped being coded. They now want to exploit all of the ecosystem just for themselves, [diving into a vertical attack,] never surrendering it to Prospective Customers, going for the Users themselves. Need it? Lend the service, from Us.
Layers of the economy are suppressed by the 'cloud' approach. Layers of expertise, mastership, reliability, security, personalized service, customer satisfaction...
Ambition stagnating the economy, as always.
Corollary: As 'Sweet Dreams' of the Big Software Houses stand now; You, the little people -the Most- are left with few strategies:
-Build your own tools enabling you 'to get shit done'.
-Work for Them, or
-Surrender your pay, to Them.
Our teachers failed at Us. We need our Childs to be Builders, again.
Thing is, you may be absolutely right.
Using the missus - non-gamer, doesn't use PCs beyond web-browing, social media, Office and some minor photo-editing - as coal-miner's canary (figuratively speaking, sheesh, you guys!), VR has been a topic of fascination for her.
Even since she read and enjoyed Ready Player One. Now she wants to get on the OASIS!
I had to gently talk her down and explain to her that with the utter incompetence of Australia in getting the necessary network infrastructure in our lifetime, a PC upgrade and some fancy headset wouldn't do her any good.
Still, in some countries with less corrupt and bungling politicians and unions, this may turn out to be the proverbial Killer App.
When the movie comes out is may give this whole complex a boost.
Prices in the UK include VAT. Prices in the USA do not include sales tax (rate depending on State), county tax, green recycling fee, left arm and leg etc so in reality prices are pretty much the same and considering the warranty is on the retailer in the UK and after 30 days in the USA you have to deal with the manufacturer (wherever they may be) the UK deal is IMHO actually better than it seems.
"Although by the time it gets to blighty that will be £200, a bit like the NVIDIA 1080 is retailing around £550 in the UK and $600 in the US :("
£550 includes vat. Take that off and the price is £458. $600 will be subject to sales tax which varies depending which state it is purchased in. $600 in pounds currently is £421.
So those prices are not as far apart as you might think.
not being funny, but I'd have thought that in the consumer space, being able to bring the latest software to potentially aging hardware would have been a good thing?
so this market shrinking headline could be just a small view of the overall PC world environment?
or would we rather hear a re-run of the vista woes of "you need to buy a new pc".
at least if you did buy a new machine for vista it'd probably be at least a core2 equiv. device that it still supported in windows10.
sorry Microsoft, you're damned if you do support older kit, and dammed if you demand the latest..
meanwhile in the enterprise space, we have a 3 year life cycle, so my corporate gen3 i7 laptop and hexcore xeon "desktop" are going end of life, and are unfortunately due a visit to the shredder, and will be replaced. Plus I've just sent off the first batch of perfectly fine, just out of currency, 30" screens to be destroyed. *sad sigh*
So Dell and HP et.al and their corporate resellers that don't really care about the consumer space. its the enterprise that keeps the money flowing. crack that, and you're made. Something Lenovo seem to be struggling with and to their cost.
like the business class seats on a plane pay for the aircraft, fuel etc. with a bit of creamy profit on top, and the cheap seats are just pure profit... meanwhile the lower tier vendors scrap it out for the crumbs off the economy floor.
As for Microsoft, well, we're staying windows7 and office2010, so no more bones to the big BillyG till we start getting vendor qualified applications to roll out that demand anything else.
You mean the next proprietary operating system from the next would-be monopoly?
Pot, kettle...
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I'd blame the increase life expectancy of modern computers.
Gone are the days of 3-5 yearly refreshes being a necessity. A first generation core i5 machine with an SSD is still perfectly fine for business use today, so why bother replacing it?
The market is just adjusting to this really, which is why it'll stabilise.
Oh don't worry, I'm sure that the OS writers will find new an imaginative ways to soak up CPU cycles and persuade us all that they're all essential to have.
On the other hand, it's been a while since they've managed to do that. I've still not thrown away my previous PC because it's still perfectly good enough for all purposes. Tried giving it away, no one wants it.
i5 + SSD? Still very good indeed. Core 2 Duo + SSD is still perfectly good too. A late 2008 Mac Book with a 1TB SSD is a pretty good machine to use. The only thing one can possibly whinge about in normal day-to-day use is that the screen resolution isn't as good as is the norm these days. There's no need to upgrade to a newer one because i) no extra performance is needed, 2) new ones cannot realistically be repaired and are essentially a throw away disposable item that costs too much, 3) I can probably fix this one indefinitely until either batteries or CPU fans become unavailable.
While there are a lot of shitty things about Win10 (pushed "upgrade", data slurping) it is not the resource hog Vista was at the time. I guess MS' recent focus on mobile and cloud has made them realise OS bloat is bad.
One wonders how long they will keep things that way though?
Gotta disagree with you on one point:
i5 + SSD? Still very good indeed. Core 2 Duo + SSD is still perfectly good too. A late 2008 Mac Book with a 1TB SSD is a pretty good machine to use. The only thing one can possibly whinge about in normal day-to-day use is that the screen resolution isn't as good as is the norm these days.
My company laptops are Core 2 Duo and have an SSD and are as you say very good indeed. They would have been replaced at least twice by now but I keep them because the screens are better than the norm these days. 16:9 sucks donkey balls even at the very high resolutions available now. The only non 16:9 options are a mac or a surface. The eye watering price of these is not what puts me off, it's the niche/limited I/O and inability to repair or upgrade.
Buy OEM not compatible - this is hard to do as vendors on tat bazaars lie. My history:
- Compatible for a previous laptop lasted a year, replaced laptop instead of trying another.
- Fake for HTC phone lasted about 3 months.
- Genuine for same HTC phone out lasted the phone.
- Genuine for current Acer laptop has lasted longer than the original.
- Genuine for Samsung phone working fine, too soon to declare good as yet
"Gone are the days of 3-5 yearly refreshes being a necessity. A first generation core i5 machine with an SSD is still perfectly fine for business use today, so why bother replacing it?"
This is what cracks me up with the current smart phone situation. They all said the smartphone will take over from PC's but the simple fact was multi core CPU's, 8GB's of RAM being cheap and SSD's being cheap enough for people to replace their spinning rust, made a huge difference, so they continue to run everything fine years after the PC was bought.
Now mobiles are 4 core's plus, 3GB's plus of RAM and either 16GB + external storage or up to 128GB's internally, so why bother replacing their iPhone 6 for a 6 Plus or their Galaxy S6 for an S7, when their existing phone runs perfectly fine and the camera's etc. all do a decent job?
Mobile manufacturers didn't learn from the PC industry, they built these nice quick devices with plenty of storage that run everything just fine even a few years later, so why bother upgrading?.
Where it took the PC industry decades to get to this point, it took them maybe 5 years and now Apple's sales have slumped and so have Samsung's. So they are now they are trying to figure out how to get people in a saturated market to keep spending half a fortnights pay packet on their new whiz bang phone that in reality, only the vain would think about upgrading to, if their current device works fine.
My new phone has a removable battery and additional storage slot so it has 96GB now.
It doesn't seem as durable as my previous phone but that is partly the wall to wall glass screen.
There does still seem to be choice if you are not tied to a single manufacturer loyalty-wise.
These mega Corps are creating their own demise in another way, too. They're outsourcing jobs from from developed economies which drives down wages and creating jobs in developing economies but at the lowest possible wages. So, the problem is that fewer people in the developed economies can afford a new, shiny, powerful computer but can just afford to replace a minimally effective device as it fails with a similar device and in the developing economies many of these "new" jobs don't pay well enough to afford the infrastructure or devices.
No long term thinking, at all. Only the current quarter matters and sooner than later that'll collapse. When that happens if these assholes get bailed out I think that's when the revolution will start in earnest. :)
You have a good point historically -- Henry Ford (hardly a philanthropist otherwise) paid better wages so his many workers could afford to buy a Ford.
However, Henry was the boss and the biggest show in town so he could play that way. Today's tech companies have to shrink costs constantly to keep up returns to investors and to fight off competitors.
Ford's approach was coupled to a model run for the Model T that continued long after it was outdated simply because it remained in vast demand.
In a mature market, costly development and retooling is essential so new products can create demand.
You have a good point historically -- Henry Ford (hardly a philanthropist otherwise) paid better wages so his many workers could afford to buy a Ford.
Realistically, most buyers of Ford were NOT Ford workers.
What made Fords buyable were not higher wages at Ford, but mass production and thus LOWER wages per unit produced (aka "cheapening").
This is also why you can buy an iPhone under USD 10'000 at all: cheapening.
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Makes one wonder how stupid some people in the PC industry is, as you say the real issue is that except for very few operations that normal people hardly do (Heavy video editing, video compression, 3D rendering, big data, etc) computers have been fast enough for everybody in the last 5-6 years.
I can imagine them looking out of the "window" hoping someone comes to rescue them.