The rise of ARM and the lethargy of consumers is leaving a mark

Nov 29, 2012 14:01 GMT  ·  By

Many are trying to point fingers and blame someone or something for how poorly the PC market is going, but it is hard to find a scapegoat, even now that Windows 8 tablets have been found wanting.

We've already written about the Windows 8 tablet market and how sales of such devices are almost non-existent.

Sadly, this is just one of the sucker punches that the world has to weather today. The other one, delivered by the same analyst (NPD), is that the Windows 8 device market has suffered a serious drop in sales.

During November alone, sales went down 21% compared to the same period of 2011. Since this is the winter holiday shopping season, that makes the situation twice as problematic.

Notebooks went down by 24% and desktops, oddly enough, only dropped 9%.

This opens a whole new can of worms. Desktops were supposedly losing ground to notebooks because the latter were as powerful but more convenient.

Also, though technological advancements in desktop CPUs and graphics have not been absent, there has not been much reason to upgrade from older systems. Games still run fine on machines from two years ago.

Thus, one would have thought that notebooks would be the ones who got the better end of the deal. That this is not the case can only mean that people are seriously favoring tablets over them.

Windows 8, Microsoft's new operating system, should have helped the segment rebound somewhat, but that did not happen.

Some are arguing that it hasn't been long enough for the OS to make a difference, four weeks. On the other hand, a new OS should cause a wave of new orders, especially during the holidays, not to mention Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Microsoft times things well, but things just didn't take off as they should have.

To add insult to injury, NPD described overall online sales as having reached a “record” level. All in all, PCs are in a pinch.