back to article What's that sound? It's PC sales plummeting into abyss

The UK PC market could be bottoming out after most of the major vendors posted sequential quarterly growth, abacus stroker Gartner has claimed. However HP, Acer and Dell PC sales are still in a nosedive compared to last year's shipments. The final market stats for Q3 2011 were baked and served today by the beancounter, with UK …

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  1. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Meh

    I wonder ...

    could this just be a case of market saturation, and people realising that the online content they are being urged to buy into is just a load of YouTube videos of skateboarding dogs ?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Well...

    I've got nothing against PCs but I don't like Winblows. Now this news might not be good for Linux etc but anything that means a drop in sales of shitty Winblows is fine by me!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Downvoted

      For subtracting from the sum total of human knowledge, and pissing in the fount of wisdom

  3. Torben Mogensen

    Tablets?

    One reason for the slow PC sales is that a lot of people have chosen to buy a tablet instead of upgrading their desktop or laptop PC.

    Also, there is very little you can do on a new desktop/laptop that you can't do on a 2-year old ditto, so there is less incentive to upgrade every (other) year than there used to be.

    1. 0laf
      Childcatcher

      Apart from games

      There really isn't much I can't do on my 8yr old PC.

      HD prices going up 3-4x are not going to help sales either.

      A new PC is generally something most people can delay buying for a year or three even when they are more preoccupied paying for gas, leccy and petrol.

    2. elkiwi
      Coat

      0r 6 years

      My 2006 Dell quad core with 3 Gb Ram and one graphics card upgrade, still serves me fine...oh wait...what's th

      1. Ammaross Danan
        Coat

        Old Computers

        Take an old dual core system and slap an SSD in it and you'd think you had a new computer. If you have more than 2GB of RAM, you're even better off.

        Hard drive supply hitting zero will likely cause the next couple of quarters to report very bad numbers.

        The fact we're teetering on another economic decline doesn't help much either.

  4. Bunglebear
    Thumb Down

    Vague

    Its a little vague without some market segmentation. Are these figures consumer or corporate? Laptop or desktop, or both? Does it include tablet sales? You need at least three quarters of financial information to draw any conclusion. I agree with Torben though, the traditional upgrade cycle is changing and may well have plateaued.

  5. Thomas 4

    Hmmm

    I've actually been thinking of upgrading my old Alienware M17 laptop to a gaming desktop of some description. Given what the article says about sales in a nosedive, do you reckon I could pick up a good gaming rig for about £1,500?

    1. Armando 123

      Maybe, but don't count on it

      Generally it's the junk at the bottom that has the biggest price drop; premium items drop some, but their percentage drop is generally less since their demand is less affected.

  6. Rustybucket

    Overkill + internet?

    Firstly, I suspect that the increase in the use of on-line applications & media has reduced the need for ever-increasing computing power.

    Secondly, could it be that large numbers of machines are already vastly overpowered for their owners' needs? If Joe Normal's system carries on working and being useful for 5+ years, why would he want to go through the hassle of replacing it?

  7. zenkaon
    Thumb Up

    Just bought a new PC

    Well, I assembled it from components I bought from about 6 different online stores. I paid just over £600 for a machine that kicks the crap out of a £1000 PCWorld machine.

    Other than the cost, and the screwdriver fun, the big advantage of a DIY system is that you get exactly what you want

  8. LarsG

    THEY'VE SPENT THE SAVED CASH ON TABLETS....

    then when they all realise how limited they are they will save to update their computer.

    Next year computer sales will rocket again.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My PC is quick enough , and it is postively geriatric !

    I've got a 4 year old intel core duo quad core processor in my pc, and since I upgraded to an SSD to boot from , well its quicker than me.. So why would i need to upgrade ?

    Beyond power sapping games run at billions of pixels, PCs for most people have been more than quick enough for a few years now . SSDs, along with faster broadband, seem to be the final part of the jigsaw of the slow components that needed improvement.

    What non-gamers really need a quicker processor ? They need a "killer-app" that needs octo-core firebreathing to run it to get a lot of people to upgrade otherwise working machines.

    So this side of A.I. on my PC , I'll only replace my it when it breaks.

    1. Glen 1
      Thumb Up

      indeed.

      even if an upgrade is deemed necessary, spending the money on a new graphics card and/or extra ram will probably have a bigger impact...

  10. Daniel B.
    Happy

    At home, I actually am pondering on upgrading my PC.

    But that's because I'm planning on setting one single PC with 4 VM's, and having everyone else use said VMs instead of building four separate PCs.

    I'm going to do that as soon as spice comes out for ARM. The rest of our "PCs" are going to be thin ARM clients...

  11. alwarming
    Paris Hilton

    Am I part of the shift ?

    Or am I the idiot who falls for the fad ??..... My tablet is a laptop replacement - to do casual browsing on the sofa while watching telly...... My laptop (shared with the lady) is actually a PC replacement - 17inch and whatnot. Hard to curl up with while slouching on Sofa...... My PC (for work) is actually a server running Ubuntu with several VMs......So actually I no longer own a generic PC anymore like I did a decade before.

    (I understand that the biz part of PC makers bundles PC & laptop revenues).

    Paris, coz she was a fad thats fading.

  12. Mikel
    Stop

    The iPad is a PC

    Add those numbers back in and you'll see nothing ever changed.

  13. rpics
    Pint

    Screen Real Estate

    Aint no way I'm gonna substitute 2x 24"LCD's for an anything-pad with a 10" screen.. Granted some home (L)users will buy a something-pad to replace their electronic desktop game of patience, but if you actually need to work on puters all day, the fondleslab is not a replacement.

    Beer cause its summer, hot, and I'm stuck inside looking at big LCD's..

  14. andrewjg

    acer.qual

    Having bought an Acer previously, I would not do so again - quality is abysmal.

  15. David Evans

    End of the line

    To be honest, if it wasn't for regular installments of Battlefield games, I wouldn't own a desktop at all. My media consumption is generally via tablet (Galaxy), I have a work laptop and a netbook I rarely even switch on any more, (and neither will need an upgrade for anything I do workwise) and a smart TV is on the way which will become the the focus of iPlayer, Skype and Youtube (Elmo vids for the baby you understand). I don't even store much on the desktop as there's a NAS whirring away under the stairs. Its only because I can't bring myself to play FPS games on a console that I have my own PC at all.

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