It was just a week ago that Gartner, Inc., a technology research firm that, among other things, advises companies about the whens and hows of transitioning to new operating systems, was talking about how the PC sales decline was slowing. PC sales, according to Gartner, would only decline by 0.3% in 2017, mainly because everybody was transitioning from Windows 7 and 8.1 to Windows 10. I was, naturally, skeptical, and it looks like I was right about that, because Gartner themselves are now saying that PC shipments are at their lowest levels since 2007.
From CNBC:
Gartner said this week that the PC market declined 4.3 percent during the second quarter. The research company said that shipments were at the "lowest quarter volume since 2007," noting the market dropped for the 11th quarter in a row.
The report is in stark contrast to another from IDC in April which said that the PC market grew for the first time in five years.Gartner's most recent report isn't just a stark contrast to IDC's April report; it's a stark contrast to their own report of a week ago, which predicted a decline in PC sales for this year of only 0.3%. According to Garner's own numbers, PC sales have already declined by 4.3%, which is 4.0% more than they themselves were forecasting, and the year's only half over. Gee, I wonder if their own vested material interests in seeing big companies upgrading their PCs had any bearing on Gartner's forecasts?
The news is worse for some PC makers, too; Apple's sales are down 9.6% compared to last year, at least if Gartner's most recent figures are to be believed. It should be said that I have serious suspicions about the quality of work that Gartner are doing here, and whether their process is impartial in any sense at all, although Apple was late in refreshing its product lineup, so it's possible that the 9.6% is in the right ballpark. Still, there's no doubt that PC sales are still in a steep decline, and the unicorn of Windows 10's imminent widespread adoption at the enterprise level, which has consistently failed to materialize, with only one PC maker seeing any growth at all.
Of note: Dell seems to be the only company finding growth in the PC business. "Dell achieved five consecutive quarters of year-on-year global shipment growth, as shipments increased 1.4 percent in 2Q17," Gartner said. "Dell has put a high priority on PCs as a strategic business. Among the top three vendors, Dell is the only vendor which can supply the integrated IT needs to businesses under the Dell Technologies umbrella of companies."So, Dell is doing better than most, although it should be noted that year-over-year growth of only 1.4% is far from fantastic (there's a reason why Dell went private, after all) - Dell's current rate of growth is only noteworthy because it is growth, in an industry that's been declining for years.
This is what the end of Moore's Law looks like. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you last bought a PC during the Obama administration, and you're still happy with how it's performing, then there's no need to upgrade. Today's newest chipsets are slightly better than those of eight years ago, but the difference is only a slight one; at the height of Moore's Law, the number of transistors on our CPUs would have doubled four times in a decade, but as the rate of PC processing power continues to plateau, there's just no reason to upgrade unless your old PC has packed it in. And people seem to have figured that out, whether they're individual consumers or CIOs.