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Reports of the PC’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. We’ve all heard that everyone’s just buying tablets and throwing out their keyboards and mice. But, if you live in the real world, you see people using PCs every day.
The statistics show that PCs are still selling in large numbers and are used much more than tablets. But we don’t need statistics to see this — we all know that huge amounts of people still use and need PCs.
Raw Statistics
PC sales are declining fast. Soon, no one will buy them anymore. Everyone’s just buying tablets, and tablet sales are skyrocketing! That’s the established wisdom, anyway. But is that what the statistics really say?
Gartner reports that 82.6 million PCs were shipped in the fourth quarter of 2013. That’s a 6.9 percent drop from the fourth quarter of 2012 and the seventh quarter in a row of declining shipments. This sounds like bad news, but the decline in PC sales has actually been slowing. Gartner believes that PC sales have “bottomed out†— while PC sales are dropping, it’s hardly a market in free fall. But it’s not really the sales that are important — it’s what people are actually using.
StatCounter’s browser usage data for January 2014 shows that desktop browsers accounted for 71.89% of visits, while mobile (smartphones) accounted for 22.42% and tablets accounted for just 5.69%. Most people are clearly using desktop web browsers to access the web. If they’re not, they’re probably using a smartphone browser — tablet browsers are far behind.
But perhaps we’re just looking in reverse. What’s really important is the long-term trend. If tablet sales are accelerating, then tablets may just “kill†PCs.
Here’s the thing: While more tablets are being sold than ever, the growth of tablet sales is slowing. IDC reports that 76.9 million tables were shipped in the fourth quarter of 2013. That’s a 28.2% growth in shipments over the same quarter in the previous year, but that previous quarter had an 87.1% growth over its previous year. In other words, tablet sales are growing more slowly — sales aren’t accelerating, but are slowing down. Many of these tablets are also cheaper, smaller, lower-end tablets that are even less prepared to replace a PC than premium tablets like the iPad. IDC concludes that “markets such as the U.S. are reaching high levels of consumer saturation.â€
And, did you catch that? In spite of all the doom and gloom, more PCs than tablets were shipped worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2013.
We Don’t Need to Replace PCs As Often
IDC used a word — “saturation†— that perfectly describes a big part of what’s going on. You don’t have to replace your computer as often as you used to. There was a time when each new version of Windows, Office, and even web browsers was heavier than ever. You saw a big speed improvement when you bought a new computer. You needed to keep buying new computers, because Windows Vista definitely wouldn’t run very well on that PC you bought when Windows XP came out. Today, Windows 7 and 8 run faster than Windows Vista on the same hardware. Even gaming PCs built years ago can likely still run the latest PC games at high settings.
People just don’t have to replace their PCs as often, so of course PC sales are falling. PCs have reached a point where they’re “good enough.†People aren’t scrambling to upgrade their PCs every few years — they’re replacing them only when they need to. People have more PCs — laptops and even desktops — lying around than ever.
On the other hand, tablets are still a new thing. Many people still don’t have tablets, so people are buying them more and more. If you want a new gadget and you’re perfectly happy with your laptop, of course you’re going to buy a tablet instead. And, like smartphones, tablets are improving faster than ever. Tablets from a few years ago have noticeably worse screens and slower hardware. They’re improving fast, just like PCs used to. You’ll see more of a benefit from upgrading an iPad that’s a few generations old than you will a laptop that’s a few generations old. Eventually, tablets will get to that “good enough†point where people won’t have to upgrade every few years, too. Tablet sales will slow and people will be saying “tablets are dying†because everyone is buying those new virtual reality headsets instead.
You can read the rest at the source
