PC shipments grow for first time since 2012

[HEXUS]

Microsoft Windows 10 was credited as impetus behind the growth, by both Gartner and IDC.

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[Corky34]

How can an OS that's been out for 3 years be driving sales?

[DanceswithUnix]

How can an OS that's been out for 3 years be driving sales?

"among businesses", so I guess companies just can't stay on 7 any longer which means bulk replacement of the boxes that can't run 10, which does happen as I used to have a work Dell desktop that had some Core 2 cpu in it that ISTR was missing some feature needed in recent Windows 10 builds.

[Corky34]

Yea i read that part and thought why an uptick at 3 years instead of the 1 or 2 years after Windows 10 release, i get that businesses take time to decide things when it comes to IT but for both Gartner and IDC to say the increase in sales is the result of a 3 year old OS seems beyond bizarre, especially when some actual new hardware has been released in the last 1-2 years.

[3dcandy]

As Dances says - quite a lot of older Intel chips cannot run Win 10 and as business' are forced to upgrade then they have to buy new

[Corky34]

Yes and i understand that but like i said it's bizarre to claim the reason businesses are upgrading their hardware now is not because newer or better hardware has been released in the last couple of years but because some software was released three years ago, if, as they claim, businesses are buying new hardware now because of Windows 10 then why not one or even two years after its release as businesses tend to work on yearly cycles?

Businesses didn't say to themselves you know what i think we'll wait for 3 years after the release of this software before upgrading our hardware.

EDIT: What Gartner and IDC are basically saying is that businesses haven't upgraded older hardware in the first Qtr of 2018 because there's actually been new, better, or improved hardware released in the last year or so but their doing it because some software was released three years ago.

[deepblue08]

Yes and i understand that but like i said it's bizarre to claim the reason businesses are upgrading their hardware now is not because newer or better hardware has been released in the last couple of years but because some software was released three years ago, if, as they claim, businesses are buying new hardware now because of Windows 10 then why not one or even two years after its release as businesses tend to work on yearly cycles?

Businesses didn't say to themselves you know what i think we'll wait for 3 years after the release of this software before upgrading our hardware.

EDIT: What Gartner and IDC are basically saying is that businesses haven't upgraded older hardware in the first Qtr of 2018 because there's actually been new, better, or improved hardware released in the last year or so but their doing it because some software was released three years ago.

I cant agree on yearly cycles idea. I cant vouch for other manufacturers, but most companies I worked for had DELL machines that included several years of warranty, some as high as 5 years. So, unless the warranty runs out, companies are reluctant to replace the machine, even if it is slow as hell. So, I would be inclined to say that companies upgrade in warranty-cycles.

[DanceswithUnix]

Yeah, businesses are more likely these days to work on a 3 or 5 year cycle and are generally change averse (as they think it is the same as risk averse).

Then there is the fact that if a business is bulk purchasing Microsoft licenses then they just have an "OS License" not a Win 10 license. What they put on there is irrelevant, the upgrade cost is the downtime of the PC update and fixing all the boxes that fail as the license cost is already covered. So at this point all the PCs that were bought on 3 year lease and possibly extended to 5 year warranty are probably starting to fail, and the new ones aren't Win 7 certified, so with a corporate policy of only having one Windows platform the entire estate needs to be updated from 7 to 10.

[Corky34]

Well it still seems bizarre for Gartner and IDC to say the uptick in PC shipments is down to an OS that's been out for three years when neither of the two major been counters (Statcounter & NetMarketShare) show a marked increase in Windows 10 for the first Qtr of 2018 and in the last 1-2 years we've seen hardware released into the market that's worth upgrading too, namely Ryzen.

Gartner and IDC are basically saying that it wasn't the Ryzen hardware ecosystem, and the extra features that come with it, that prompted businesses to upgrade their hardware, but a 3 year old OS, despite there being no logical reason and little evidence to support their claim.

[DanceswithUnix]

You are thinking too much like an enthusiast/consumer, not like a company bean counter.

Businesses mostly buy low end Dell kit aimed at secretarial (MS Office) tasks. Dell sell basically only Intel stuff and that has been more than up to the task for years. There is also a tendency to always buy the same PC spec as last time regardless of whether it is an out of date platform simply because you don't want to give your IT dept lots of OS images to maintain.

My last job gave me a choice of a few models of Lenovo laptop or an Apple laptop. That was supposedly an engineering company too, one of the biggest in IT.

[Corky34]

I'm not thinking like an enthusiast/consumer, I'm thinking business is a diverse field with many different reasons for wanting to upgrade, chiefly and commonly amongst which when buying new hardware they expect it to be more capable than what they previously had.

I'm thinking businesses on mass don't think to themselves "you know what, now that software is 3 years old we'll upgrade our hardware", I'm thinking businesses on mass have said "you know what, if we replace our old hardware we get capabilities we didn't have before instead of more of the same but a smidgen faster".

EDIT: With regards to the likes of Dell selling basically only Intel stuff that's not the case, i started counting but gave up when i got to 40+ systems starting at $550.

It seems like Gartner and IDC people are trying to attribute an increase in PC shipments to anything other than there now being a compelling reason for business to upgrade older hardware, like i said that seems bizarre when all evidence points to AMD having increased market share and sales in the last 1-2 years and no other obvious changes within the PC ecosystem other than an OS that was released three years ago and has not seen a marked jump in market share recently, and the same incremental performance increase that we've seen from Intel for what seems like forever.

[DanceswithUnix]

EDIT: With regards to the likes of Dell selling basically only Intel stuff that's not the case, i started counting but gave up when i got to 40+ systems starting at $550.

Really? Dell have consumer systems (which I wouldn't touch with a barge pole), but if I go to Dell and select the "for work" I get to: https://www.dell.com/en-uk/work/shop...tations?~ck=mn

I can search by processor type: Pentium, i3, i5 or i7. Nothing else on the drop down.

Most business machines will be the £300 Optiplex, which isn't going to edit word documents any faster than a 5 year old Optiplex that cost the same.

Edit: I thought I read of them existing, but if they are hard to find they aren't going to sell. AMD say a Ryzen Optiplex exists, but if it does Dell are hiding it: https://www.amd.com/Documents/481-Op...Spec-sheet.pdf

Another edit: What would be interesting would be to see what the sales figures were like a few years ago, if people did a last buy of windows 7 hardware back then it might help explain the blip now.

You are right that not all businesses are the same and there are good reasons to buy new kit. The last work PC I put a spec together for is a Ryzen 2600 with 32GB of ECC and a raid 1 HDD pair to work as a cheap virtualization server. It's lovely, but I had to build it from components and I can only do that because I am at what is almost a startup company. Most companies will want to buy a PC that is pre-built, with a good on-site repair warranty and guaranteed parts and machine replacement availability for 5 years.

[Corky34]

If you search their site for Ryzen you get a more complete list.

I'd also say that most business machines are not 3.9Ghz two core system with 4GB ram, yes there's probably plenty of them out there but i doubt businesses have been in any rush to upgrade such a low end system, instead their probably spending the money where it makes the most difference, i.e upgrading old system that six years ago, seeing as that's when PC shipments started to decline, were considered mid to high end i5's and i7's.

Like i said i find it bizarre that despite reports showing AMD have increased their market share, despite AMD themselves saying Ryzen processor shipments grew significantly, from a bit more than 40 percent of client APU/CPU revenue in Q4 2017 to 60 percent in Q1 2018, that despite other indicators seemingly pointing towards generally strong uptake of Ryzen system.

That despite that we're going to put an increase in PC shipments down to the majority of businesses all deciding to upgrade their hardware because some software is now three years old instead a year or two years, that miraculously the majority of businesses all had the warranties run out in the same period and had to go out and start buying new hardware.

[DanceswithUnix]

If you search their site for Ryzen you get a more complete list.

I only get Inspiron and the odd Alienware box. Those are consumer PCs, and I have yet to come across a business that buys them. Dell as a consumer is a nightmare, as a business they are excellent, but you need to buy the business kit for that to work.

IME businesses are replacing those ancient PCs because they are failing and you can't extend the on-site warranty forever. That flies in the face of the whole "Windows 10" reasoning, I suspect the reasons are actually rather more complex and Win10 is just one part of that picture. I also seem to be getting a lot of emails about jobs available at the moment so I guess at least in IT/engineering the job market is quite buoyant atm which probably increases PC churn as people leave/join companies.

I do hope AMD are getting some business market share, I changed jobs in March and would have loved an AMD based machine. I ended up with a rather expensive Dell laptop which has a high end Intel CPU and an Nvidia Quadro graphics card in it and haven't enjoyed the experience. At the time the only AMD based laptop I could find was some 17" gaming monster which looked a nightmare to carry around. Quick, in budget, but just not practical.

[Corky34]

I only get Inspiron and the odd Alienware box. Those are consumer PCs, and I have yet to come across a business that buys them. Dell as a consumer is a nightmare, as a business they are excellent, but you need to buy the business kit for that to work.

True their site is a nightmare to navigate and find what you're looking for, although i don't think it's a coincidence that AMD have said they've been working with the major OEMs and that's exactly where the Gartner and IDC reports say there's been growth, the 'other' OEMs actually saw the same decline that they've all been experiencing for the last six years.

IME businesses are replacing those ancient PCs because they are failing and you can't extend the on-site warranty forever. That flies in the face of the whole "Windows 10" reasoning, I suspect the reasons are actually rather more complex and Win10 is just one part of that picture. I also seem to be getting a lot of emails about jobs available at the moment so I guess at least in IT/engineering the job market is quite buoyant atm which probably increases PC churn as people leave/join companies.

IMO businesses that have low end PCs are going to do exactly the same thing they did with low end PCs that had XP installed on them, they'll keep hold of them and won't bother replacing them until there's no other choice, there's no reason for a businesses to replace a cheap as chips system they bought 4 to 8 years ago that came with Windows 7, a company isn't going to replace a 3Ghz odd CPU with 2 cores and 4GB RAM for a 4Ghz odd CPU with 2 cores and 4GB RAM if cost is their priority.

I do hope AMD are getting some business market share, I changed jobs in March and would have loved an AMD based machine. I ended up with a rather expensive Dell laptop which has a high end Intel CPU and an Nvidia Quadro graphics card in it and haven't enjoyed the experience. At the time the only AMD based laptop I could find was some 17" gaming monster which looked a nightmare to carry around. Quick, in budget, but just not practical.

Well you know where i stand. I'm pretty convinced that AMD are getting some business market share (the increase in the major OEM shipments can't all be down to consumer (Jo public) demand) and i think Gartner & IDC have become the victim of an old mindset that said when Microsoft release a new OS businesses buy new hardware, IMO that only happened in the past because a new OS (95 to XP to 7) brought with it new capabilities and the older OSs life-cycle was ending.