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Worldwide PC sales fell for the fifth year in a row in 2016, totalling 269.7 million units. This represents a 6.2 per cent decline on 2015. Analysts highlight how the most growth has been in sectors of innovation, while stagnation in others has given consumers few reasons to upgrade.
Industries like PC gaming are going strong, despite the death of the medium being hailed by one and all on a regular basis. However PC hardware sales are not what they once were. The biggest growth sectors in the PC industry for the past few years have been in low cost laptops and two-in-one convertibles, where innovation and new features can be found.
There is also growth in the gaming PC market, according to the Gartner study. However that and the laptop purchases have not been enough to stem the tide of a shrinking overall PC industry.
With smartphones becoming ever more ubiquitous and capable of fulfilling more technological roles than ever before, PC upgrades for irregular users are becoming less frequent and far less important.
Lenovo was the top seller, but smartphones continue to force a decline in PC sales. Source: Lenovo
In fact research suggests that PC purchases are now much more of a ‘need' buy, rather than a want. This means that big sales events like Black Friday or the Christmas rush are no longer an effective time to market PCs. In recent months other innovative technology, like cloud-connected speakers, VR headsets and wearables have proved far more popular.
Early total estimates for PC sales for the year – including desktops, notebooks and tablets – pin Lenovo as the biggest manufacturer in the world, with a 20.7 per cent share of the market. HP wasn't far behind with a 19.4 per cent share, while third place Dell had just 14.6 per cent.
While it might have placed only third though, Dell was the only one of the top five major manufacturers who saw any growth in its sales year on year.
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KitGuru Says: Although we have seen big leaps in graphical performance over the past couple of years, the fact that mainstream processors aren't making leaps and bounds any more could be part of the reason that upgrades are just not as viable any more. When was the last time you upgraded your PC for something other than gaming?
Again, I don’t know anyone who is buying a brand made PC. We are gamers, we build customs 😀
Those figures are pretty normal since only corporations are maintaining them, and most of the systems they got are probably some i5 with enough power to keep them going for another 10 years and more. So yeah, those numbers are always stagnate or a bit up or a bit down. Even if there was software or hardware breakthrough that could give a good reason for every corporation to upgrade, they will most likely stay with what they have already invested upon.
Those numbers doesn’t mean anything for the PC market.
I’m custom builds are a blip on the radar. Googling, about 13 million GPU’s were sold in 2016, compared to the above figure of 270 million PC’s. That figure is up from previous years, so the custom desktop market may be in good shape, but it seems that in general, people are buying fewer PC’s.
Sure, but when you go custom you disturb completely the “I get a new PC” system.
Unlike someone who is getting a brand PC for (let’s say) 500 euros and keeps its for 10 years, someone with a custom system never actually stop spending during those 10 years, there is always something that can be upgraded with little money, but after those 10 years you end up with a sum much greater than those 500 the other guy spent.
So a better understanding for where the market is going it could be if we check the money that are spent in hardware in general. Because sure what you say it’s truth, this year 13 million people got a new GPU but that just add up to the 10 million that got one last year and will keep it for another 2 or 3 years.
But judging from specific components doesn’t give a good view on the market. I still rock an ancient (by today standards) AMD 7850, yet I spent some money this year to get a SSD.
To put this in better prospective think that you may update CPU/MOBO/RAM this year and keep it for like 10 years and in the meanwhile you have added RAM, SSD and changed GPU at least twice (like me).
I have my current system since 2004, this year I changed the last standing component that was left from the original system. The case. As long I changed the insides it was like I still have my old PC, now that I changed the outside but kept the insides, technically I still have my old PC, so I never really get a new PC.
Because of that for the above market I don’t exist, but I have spent in those 12 years a lot of money, while the branded guy probably changed PC just 2 times. So in general the custom build PCs spent way more money and the market never stopped growing, because there is always something better to get with little money (compared to the initial cost of the system) to make your system better and increase the lifespan.
I think that all this still doesn’t change the trend. It’s still true that people buy fewer PC’s. There are parts of the market where sales see growth, and it’s possible for example that the DIY desktop will see it this year thanks to Ryzen, but other parts still decline.
As for buying piecemeal, that doesn’t mean much, either. Sure, a lot of the DIY crowd are simply enthusiasts who like new things, and buy often, but most normal people will still buy on a regular basis that’s not necessarily that fast. Sure, you might buy a GPU one year, an SSD the next, then get a RAM upgrade, then after a few years buy a new CPU and MB. In the end, you still took a few years to replace your system, and in fact if you had done it all at once you’d probably have bought more often.
And sure, you’re spending more money than most, but that’s because you’re (probably) a gamer, not because you’re building a PC. A gamer buying an OEM system (such as Alienware) will spend more.
Pretty obvious why it’s slown down, and it isn’t a problem for the PC Master race.
The only people who need care about this news are investors.