Analysis - PC market shrinks by 3.2% in Q1

[HEXUS]

The latest IDC and Gartner figures are way below forecast, for lots of reasons.

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[Brewster0101]

Could be a simple fact people just can't afford to buy new PC's all the time.

Considering the generation of latest consoles lasts around 4-5 years, this is much more tempting for the average household as a gaming system.

PC's haven't really changed much in 3/4 years except for games. I have a Athlon 2500+ runinng windows 7 just fine and does everything the kids need. Think consumers don't have much spare capital and added to the fact that little is to be gained for the average Joe in a new PC over one that is a few years old. Little point spendind money on something new that does the same as something old.

[Lucio]

I'd imagine a good reason for the shrinkage is down to big businesses not wanting to upgrade their machines during an economic downturn, plus the reduction in new hires meaning less machines are needed for new members of staff.

[bobharvey]

@ Brewswer
@ Lucio

I concur with both ideas. But there is another. The PC I built 3 years ago, or bought 2 years ago, is still more powerful than I will ever need. There is nothing I need to do that XP does not already do. Same at work. There is no trace of $MEGACORP migrating away from XP for many years to come. They still sell embedded products based on it. too.

There is no need to upgrade regularly any more. I don't buy an vacuum cleaner till the old one breaks, we are at that stage with the computer now.

The hardware manufacturers have stopped innovating, and in fact seem to be largely dissapearing. Extra portability or convenience seems to have been taken care of with the netbooks, the phones, and the ipad. There really is no need to buy anything else.

In my personal case, too, I paid 70 quid for this copy of XP. A copy of W7 is going to cost me over 140 quid. That's a lot of sales resistance to overcome, especially as what I have is working perfectly well. I know how annoyed I will be when I build a new machine and M$ won't let me register my copy of XP on it.