14 DAY TRIAL // PC sales haven't exactly been bad during the past few years, but they haven't really been great either. In fact, they've been falling more and more every quarter, with few exceptions. Now, though, it seems that this trend is easing up.
The demand for PCs dropped almost suddenly a few years ago, when tablets took off and summarily sidelined netbooks in just three months.
Netbooks used to be the fastest growing market segment prior to the iPad's arrival and the many Androids slates that followed.
They were doing so well that Acer just funneled most of its resources in them when the tablet market exploded.
Acer has been doing its best to mitigate the damage of that stance in the time since, but everyone else on the PC front has had to play their cards especially carefully as well. Now, though, the personal computing segment may be getting ready for a turnaround.
Why the PC market had such trouble
The main reason was because tablets were a new thing everyone wanted to try, half-way between laptops and phones. And with keyboard covers/docks coming out relatively fast, they had enough to offer that the interest in laptops fell significantly.
They also provided Intel and ARM with a field of the market where they could finally try to encroach on the other's territory. Previously, Intel had strong but power-hungry chips, while ARM had weak but very efficient ones. Now, they've started to close that gap.
There's also the fact that a nascent market always tents to distract consumers from existing ones for the first few years. Admittedly, tablets did it to a greater extent than even netbooks did, and they didn't quite fit in an existing segment either (laptops).
What's happening now
According to Gartner and IDC, two of the world's foremost market analyst firms, worldwide demand for PCs (desktops and laptops) only suffered a slight drop in demand during the third quarter of 2014.
Worldwide shipments were of around 78.5 million, only 1.7% less than in Q3 2013 instead of the expected 4.1%. Gartner is even more optimistic, reporting 79.4 million, just 0.5% fewer than last year.
How this is possible
That the awe of a new product type is no longer in play is one reason. The other is that PCs, both mini desktops and laptops, have started to sell for amounts of money close to those of tablets, and people are starting to remember that, at the end of the day, laptops can still do more than tablets can. Especially now that they're getting 360-degree hinges or easel-like frames.