PC shipments stuck in neutral despite AI buzz
- Reference: 1728564255
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/10/10/pc_market_gartner_canalys/
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Those magical AI PC boxes were supposed to fire up buyer enthusiasm and spur the somewhat listless market for desktop and laptop systems into significant growth territory, but that doesn't appear to be happening.
According to the latest figures from Gartner, global PC shipments totaled 62.9 million units during Q3 of this year, representing a 1.3 percent decline compared with the same period last year. However, this does follow three consecutive quarters of modest growth.
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"Even with a full line-up of Windows-based AI PCs for both Arm and x86 in the third quarter of 2024, AI PCs did not boost the demand for PCs since buyers have yet to see their clear benefits or business value," commented Gartner Director Analyst Mikako Kitagawa.
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This is perhaps understandable when AI PCs are largely just a marketing concept, and vendors can't agree on exactly what the [4]the definition of an AI PC should be. Even worse, some buyers of Arm-based Copilot+ machines discovered that their [5]performance isn't actually very good with some applications.
Nevertheless, Gartner believes that the PC market is now on a recovery track, with Kitagawa claiming: "At the worldwide level, PC demand will see more uptake toward the end of 2024 and more robust growth in 2025, when the PC refresh will be at its peak."
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This belief is shared by another analyst outfit, Canalys, which puts market shipments at 66.4 million units during the quarter, saying this represents a modest 1.3 percent year-on-year rise.
"Although growth in Q3 was modest, the PC market recovery is now well under way with a number of positive signals indicating stronger performance in the coming quarters," opined Principal Analyst Ishan Dutt.
[7]Win 11 refreshes delayed, say PC makers – and here's why
[8]Hands up who wants a PC? Lenovo reports declining returns
[9]Mac shipments slump as Apple finally bitten by glum PC demand
[10]IDC gets even more pessimistic about PC sales
Canalys says that this slight uptick is thanks to strong demand from businesses, which now have just a year to upgrade their fleets to Windows 11 to avoid paying extended support fees for Windows 10.
"Commercial procurement is expected to remain elevated throughout the rest of this year, with 54 percent of channel partners surveyed by Canalys anticipating growth in their PC business in H2 2024 compared with the same period last year," Dutt said.
The launch of the latest-generation AI PC processors from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm is also strengthening the value proposition of upgrading an old PC, Canalys maintains, although it concedes that "consumer demand has not been as strong." It expects that the 2024 holiday season will see modest growth toward the end of this year.
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The two analyst firms agree on who the top players are in the PC market, both ranking Lenovo as the number one vendor in terms of shipments followed by HP then Dell. Asus and Apple are vying for fourth and fifth spot, with Gartner putting Apple ahead, while Canalys ranks Asus higher.
Both indicate that Lenovo has seen its market share rising, with 2.5-3 percent growth year-on-year, while HP has remained largely static and Dell has declined by about 4 percent.
According to Gartner, the US market is where the growth was in the past quarter, up 5.6 percent compared with the same period last year. In contrast, the EMEA market saw a decline of about 1.5 percent, while the Asia-Pacific market saw a decline of 8.5 percent year-on-year.
The company said this was largely due to China, which saw a fall of 10 percent due to weak demand for desktop PCs from government and state-owned organizations. ®
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[4] https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/05/ai_pc_confusion/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/05/ai_pc_gaming/
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[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/13/win_11_refreshes_delayed_pc_makers/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/17/lenovo_pc_sales/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/10/not_even_apple_is_impervious/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/07/pc_sales_worse_idc/
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[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: 'AI Buzz'
I just bought a laptop to replace an ageing machine that was getting very long in the tooth. Did I care about AI? No. Did I care about the processor performance, the size of the hard disk, the quality of the screen and the amount of RAM? yes. (The GPU didn't really matter to me, pretty much anything is good enough for simple photo editing nowadays....)
In fact, the one thing I wanted from the PC that I didn't get was to not have to spend ages trying to understand why it wouldn't connect to my network disk at home. (I missed the announcement (if there was one) that the latest builds of windows 11 require SMB shares to ask for a username and password when you connect to them unless you muck about with the registry.... Older builds are happy to use a guest login...
That's because 99% of the population would rather buy an Nvidia card for their existing PC rather than buy a whole computer that can't even play games!
My next move is away from any "AI" crap...
Don't need it, don't want it and if my search results are anything to go by, it chucks out shite.
There will not be a Windows10 SO I rush
>> thanks to strong demand from businesses, which now have just a year to upgrade their fleets to Windows 11 to avoid paying extended support fees for Windows 10.
Most PCs out there now can run Windows 11 one way or another. Also, bottom line, it's cheaper to pay for Windows 10 extended support than to buy a new Windows 11 pc.
And then you get people like me - my Linux server runs just fine, and I'm going to image my Windows drive so that if it ever gets but (not likely), I'll just re-image the system drive and be done with it. Probably be okay for another decade.
Gartner always gets it wrong, no reason why this time should be different
The market is going to go WAY up May or June if M$ doesn't budge on the termination date of Windows 10 support. Many companies and public institutions will have to if MS doesn't budge as they have to carry cyber insurance in many cases and cyber insurance policies require all of the systems to be on a supported OS in general. So by July of 2025 I expect that PC makers will have a huge surge in demand. Get your PC now as the latter half of 2025 it will be impossible or stock up now and make bank come October.
This is only one of five possibilities. The other are: 1. Those who need W11 for insurance are already on it. 2. As LVPC above says, most PCs can run W11. Some of those users will simply upgrade to 11 when pushed and no sooner. 3. Also as LVPC says some will pay for extended W10 support rather than buy a new PC. 4. Heave a sigh of relief that the damn thing isn't going to get yet another upgrade that ties it in knots and/or removes something that was depended upon.
Is this because home PC users don't give a crap about AI since all they are doing is gaming, borwsing pr0n or doing home accounts and unless the home PC explodes they're not going to replace it.
I actually do a bit of AI work at home but it't image based and works fine on any machine with a GPU, special AI chippery not necessary
'AI Buzz'
Gee, and here I am holding off on buying new machines till this pervasive integrated AI shite goes away. Okay, you can neuter the worst of it with registry and gpedit fixes, but the last thing I want is a laptop with an 'AI' button on the keyboard. Even though you can remap it, it would be quite the badge of shame - imagine showing up at a conference with your widdle AI waptop, awwwww. And then being a complete pariah because nobody wants to be near anything running Recall - like being a glasshole.