This is what the end of Moore's Law looks like, part 2

When this year's devices just aren't that much more powerful than last year's devices, or the year's before that, or the year's before that... well, there's just less incentive to replace them, isn't there? That's what we're now seeing in sales figures of devices across the board, and according to some analysts, it's not likely to change much, anytime soon.

From Computerworld:

According to Gartner, which provided Computerworld with its latest device shipment forecast broken out by operating system, in 2016 Windows powered about 260 million devices of the 2.3 billion shipped during the year. Windows accounted for approximately 11.2% of the total devices, which overwhelmingly ran Google's Android.

Meanwhile, iOS and macOS -- the latter was formerly dubbed OS X -- sank to 248 million devices in 2016, a 10% drop from the year prior. The cause: Slackened sales of the iPhone, Apple's dominant device and biggest money maker.

[...]

Gartner's forecast was another gloomy report on almost every device category, with shipments flat this year compared to last and growth not projected until 2018.

"The global devices market is stagnating," said Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal in a statement Wednesday. Mobile phone shipments are growing only in emerging markets in the Asia and Pacific markets, Atwal added, and noted that, "The PC market is just reaching the bottom of its decline."

The PC industry's troubles have affected Microsoft most of all; Windows is almost entirely dependent on PC shipments, which have been stuck in a protracted slump. Future shipments were further hit when Microsoft walked away from the smartphone business last year.

[...]

PCs will not disappear -- something some pundits fretted about as the sales and shipment downturn extended past earlier records -- but the business has been hard hit: In 2012, for instance, more than 350 million PC-like devices shipped globally.

Gartner is still betting that a PC replacement cycle will boost shipments, even if only slightly. But this week's forecast -- unlike the one in October -- predicted a delayed growth. In October, Gartner had said the PC business would claw its way back into the black in 2017; this month's prognosis is that growth won't occur until 2018.

Now, predictions like this should always be taken with a few grains of salt, and the fact that this prediction amounts to, "not this year, but maybe next year," along with predicting that iOS + MacOS sales numbers will recover and surpass Windows' (but without going into details as to why that should happen, now that consumers have apparently soured on Apple's product line) are both problems. Gartner's also pegged the Enterprise shift to Windows 10, and thus new devices, to 2018... again, without explaining why the trend should start then, and not closer to 2020, when cost-conscious companies can continue to operate just fine for another couple of years using the hardware and software that they've already paid for.

The shift of market share from traditional leaders like Apple and Microsoft to Google and Android is somewhat interesting. The fact that Apple is aggressively dumping features that people use all the time (like standard USB ports and headphone jacks) from their devices is probably not helping the Cupertino crowd, and Microsoft's attempt to push their customers into the cloud may actually be helping Android. Google, after all, has lived in the cloud for a long time, and unlike Microsoft can continue to provide those cloud-based computing services for free (supported by ads, natch, but then Google's always been ad-supported).

Overall, though, we appear to be seeing a continuation of trends that have been evident in device sales numbers for a while now. Apart from PC gamers, early adopters, and other enthusiasts, it seems that everyone is pretty happy with the performance of the devices they already own, only replacing those devices as they wear out... and mostly replacing them with cheaper Android devices, rather than more expensive iOS/MacOS or Windows products. None of the new hardware's "features" are things people really want or need, nor are they particularly impressive as technological achievements in and of themselves. Moore's Law alone simply can't drive the high-tech hardware industry anymore.

Which leaves us with the real question: Now that Moore's Law isn't the driving force behind the hardware business, what happens to the the computer makers and consumer electronics companies who have, for decades, been relying on that rapid pace of development to drive sales? Everything we're seeing, from 3D and 4K TVs, to VR and the Internet of Things, fairly screams of the creeping desperation that these companies must be starting to feel as ongoing decline turns into an inevitable plateau.

3D TVs did not become a thing, and while 4K TVs might be out-selling older-model HD TVs lately, they're still not selling nearly as well as HD TVs used to; absent another legislative push from the U.S. Congress, it doesn't look like market forces alone will make 4K into the new standard for TV broadcasts, either. VR still lacks a value proposition which would make it appealing to consumers, as does the Internet of Things -- it's easy to see how companies flogging the hardware would benefit from its widespread adoption, but there's very little advantage on display for the average consumer. And, if this year's tepid coverage of CES's offerings is any kind of guide, it would seem that hype alone isn't enough anymore to sell consumers expensive new tech hardware that they don't actually need, and which isn't actually outperforming the hardware that they already own.