iPad will keep eating away PC market, despite Windows 8 "excitement"

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Outside of Apple's Macs, sales in the global PC market have remained stagnant for several quarters, with many predicting a rebound after Microsoft ships Windows 8. But that's not going to stop the decline, an analyst with Barclays states.

There's no question that PC sales have continued to shrink, both in the US and globally, but there is some controversy about the cause. In July, IDC reported a 10.6 percent decline in US sales, and a slight decline globally. Gartner's estimates were not much better, indicating a 5.7 percent decline in the US.

Greatly increased sales of Apple's iPad, introduced just two years ago, have clearly replaced millions of PC sales among consumers, education and in the enterprise across a variety of tasks where Apple's easy to manage and use device has replaced conventional desktop PCs, full sized notebooks and economy netbooks.

In particular, the introduction of the iPad appears to have obliterated the once surging market for netbooks, which IDC and Gartner count as PCs.

Canalys, which incorporates iPad and other tablet sales in its PC shipment numbers (unlike IDC and Gartner) reported global growth of 11.7 percent, but most of that came via sales of Apple's iPad, giving the company a company a 19.4 percent combined share of PC sales and 59.6 percent annual growth, more than twice that of second place grower Lenovo.

Canalys


Cannibalization by Apple or waiting for Microsoft?

However, it remains a matter of controversy if the moribund global market for PCs is simply being eaten up by iPad sales or if buyers are instead just waiting for the upcoming release of Windows 8 (or some combination of the two factors).

In the smartphone market, there is similar controversy about why Apple's iPhone sales are slowing, but most agree that consumers are anticipating the upcoming iPhone 5 refresh, rather than buying alternatives. Every annual sales cycle of iPhones has followed the same pattern.

Addressing the optimism around Windows 8, which its supporters hope will both rebound conventional PC sales and power alternative tablet or convertible designs that compete with Apple's Windows-free iPad, Barclay's analyst Ben Reitzes wrote that the Windows 8 launch will have limited impact.

"We continue to believe," Reitzes stated, "that the rise of smartphones and the iPad are having an adverse impact on the PC market ? in addition to macro [economic] factors.?

Not enough wallet in the world to grow PC market

Channel-filling shipments of new Windows 8 PCs should "improve in September meaningfully on a month-to-month basis into the launch of Windows 8 and new Ultrabooks," Reitzes wrote.

"However, after some short-term 'excitement' we believe the PC market will resume its pattern of deceleration given secular threats from tablets and smartphones," he added, "which are cannibalizing traditional PC tasks and creating all new use cases through apps."

Reitzes added, "while PCs certainly don?t go away, we simply do not believe that consumers and corporations have enough 'wallet' to grow the PC market given the need to invest in new gadgets and platforms."

The analyst predicted "stagnant PC unit growth given elongated sales cycles—with industry revenue declines that fund the growth of these new platforms."
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 59
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member


    What Windows 8 "excitement"?


     


    All I'm seeing is a lot of worry, hand-wringing, and Vista comparisons.  

  • Reply 2 of 59
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    quadra 610 wrote: »
    What Windows 8 "excitement"?

    All I'm seeing is a lot of worry, hand-wringing, and Vista comparisons.  

    Lots of people have expressed their views of Windows 8:
    http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/yawning.html
  • Reply 3 of 59
    just_mejust_me Posts: 590member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post


    What Windows 8 "excitement"?


     


    All I'm seeing is a lot of worry, hand-wringing, and Vista comparisons.  



    At least vista has more users than OSx


     


    image

  • Reply 4 of 59
    daharderdaharder Posts: 1,580member
    Windows 8 clearly moves the 'personal computing' operating system in a new and exciting direction, whereas most competitors are still patching 10 year+ old desktop environments long over-due for replacement.

    Sure mobile OS-based devices have their place in the market, but it's rather misguided to belive that ANY current tablet (aka XL media consumption device) is capable of replacing desktop OS-based computers for those using them for more productive purposes.
  • Reply 5 of 59
    seankillseankill Posts: 566member
    just_me wrote: »
    At least vista has more users than OSx

    1000


    I feel sorry for those people. I bought my dell laptop in 2007 when Vista was pretty young. I had my laptop for a little while and said screw this. Put XP on it and it still runs fairly well to the day. When I buy in the future, it'll be a MacBook Pro or a windows 8 PC then I will load someome's windows 7 on it.


    Vista is horrible. Period....
  • Reply 6 of 59
    just_mejust_me Posts: 590member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Seankill View Post





    I feel sorry for those people. I bought my dell laptop in 2007 when Vista was pretty young. I had my laptop for a little while and said screw this. Put XP on it and it still runs fairly well to the day. When I buy in the future, it'll be a MacBook Pro or a windows 8 PC than I will load someome's windows 7 on it.

    Vista is horrible. Period....


    yeah ran into a vista machine recently. It was bad. Its access restrictions is what set off people.


     


    Win7, Win8, Lion are nice. I havent had a chance to load ML yet

  • Reply 7 of 59
    just_me wrote: »
    At least vista has more users than OSx

    1000

    Right. Because the story wasn't about how Mac was eating into PC sales, but how iPad was. Just don't count any iPads and Vista market share still looks pretty strong. Return head to sand when done.
  • Reply 8 of 59
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    ... Barclay's analyst Ben Reitzes wrote that the Windows 8 launch will have limited impact.


     


    Consumers will upgrade to Windows 8 only because it's pre-installed on the pee cee they buy when their old one freezes up from malware or totally dies.  They have no choice, unless they're among the tiny minority who 1. still have their XP install disc, and 2. have the time and technical knowledge to do the downgrade to XP, and 3. either care enough to downgrade or are forced to downgrade because their older apps break in "XP Mode."


     


    Corporate IT departments will upgrade to Windows 8, but only when they buy new pee cees, and they might never even boot them in Windows 8.  They'll re-image their systems with XP.  Because, unlike consumers, Corporate IT does have a choice.  That choice is Window XP, and they'll downgrade.  XP has been "good enough" for nearly 11 years, and it's going to be "good enough" for the next 11 years.


     


    All of which will maintain XP's install base among Window users.  Long after Microsoft's official support for XP is terminated in 2014.  From a 2011 CNET article on Windows XP:  


     


     


     


    Quote:


    survey of IT professionals last November found that half of them were planning to continue to use XP even after the support tap is turned off in 2014.



     


    And why would that be?  Because XP is a well-known quantity.  IT professionals know it inside and out.  A whole generation of IT professionals has been trained, for their entire professional career, to deal with systems running XP.  And Vista, 7, and 8 simply don't offer any compelling new features.  Not worth the time, expense, re-training, re-coding, and lost productivity during the transition away from XP.

  • Reply 9 of 59
    daylove22daylove22 Posts: 215member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post


    What Windows 8 "excitement"?


     


    All I'm seeing is a lot of worry, hand-wringing, and Vista comparisons.  



    Windows 8 is a game changer and tablets running it will succeed...

  • Reply 10 of 59
    seankillseankill Posts: 566member
    daylove22 wrote: »
    Windows 8 is a game changer and tablets running it will succeed...



    I want the 600 dollar one so I can run those windows programs I need for engineering. Ohh...wait. Can't do that. Damn

    I can get the more costly one? Nah, ultra book or Mac book air would be a much better buy
  • Reply 11 of 59
    umrk_labumrk_lab Posts: 550member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by SockRolid View Post


     


    <...>


     


    All of which will maintain XP's install base among Window users.  Long after Microsoft's official support for XP is terminated in 2014.  From a 2011 CNET article on Windows XP:  


     


     


     


     


    <...>



     


     


    I was not aware that Microsoft bothered about supporting their customers....

  • Reply 12 of 59
    just_mejust_me Posts: 590member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Quadra 610 View Post


    What Windows 8 "excitement"?


     


    All I'm seeing is a lot of worry, hand-wringing, and Vista comparisons.  



     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Just_Me View Post


    At least vista has more users than OSx


     


    image



     


    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post





    Right. Because the story wasn't about how Mac was eating into PC sales, but how iPad was. Just don't count any iPads and Vista market share still looks pretty strong. Return head to sand when done.


     


    Follow the replies.

  • Reply 13 of 59
    gprovidagprovida Posts: 258member


    Care needs to be taken with some of this data.  It is my understanding that Lenovo is doing just fine in China and other developing markets.  Actually not too bad in US and Europe, but big gains are in immature markets.  Immature markets can be seen as non-consuming markets, that is, they have little PC presence and with low price points albeit not as high performance, Lenovo is growing my selling to people who were not being served by traditional PC market.


     


    This is a classic bottom up disruption to the PC market [and I suspect others will pile on] and so traditional PC OEMs are being capped by Apple at the high end, fenced by iPads and soon Surfaces at mid end, and cheap PCs at the bottom.  The bottom will move up the food chain consuming moderate prices, enterprise, and eventually premium prices.  


     


    How well Apple will manage is way in the future [3-4 years] but Dell and HP are going to get hurt fast in the next 1-2 years.

  • Reply 14 of 59
    gwmacgwmac Posts: 1,807member


    Windows 8 for tablets might have succeeded if they could run all the software as the regular PC version of Windows 8. I don't follow this story too closely but it is my understanding since this is an ARM chip version it will require modified software to run. That means that Microsoft is banking on people's familiarity and loyalty to Windows to carry over to tablets and smart phones. That strategy might have worked 3 years ago but now it is too late. People are used to iOS and Android and like them. They are far more familiar with Android and iOS than they ever were with Windows and there are hundreds of thousands of apps to choose from. The Windows phone and tablet marketplace for apps is tiny by comparison. 

  • Reply 15 of 59
    I'm a tech guy and trust me, I see no "excitement" about Windows 8 from anyone I know.
  • Reply 16 of 59
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DaHarder View Post



    Windows 8 clearly moves the 'personal computing' operating system in a new and exciting direction, whereas most competitors are still patching 10 year+ old desktop environments long over-due for replacement.


    !0 + years? More like 44+ years old. UNIX is not going to be replaced anytime soon. The latest version just landed on Mars. Why reinvent the wheel?


     


    The only thing new about Windows 8 is the name. Under the hood it is still the same old thing. Patching is what all OSs do. What you start out with determines whether patching it is worthwhile or not. In the case of Windows, in order to truly fix it they would have to break its legacy compatibility and MS is not about to do that because that would be suicide.


     


    Apple apparently does not have an issue with breaking compatibility since they do it to some degree with nearly every release.

  • Reply 17 of 59
    rednivalrednival Posts: 331member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by gwmac View Post


    Windows 8 for tablets might have succeeded if they could run all the software as the regular PC version of Windows 8. I don't follow this story too closely but it is my understanding since this is an ARM chip version it will require modified software to run. That means that Microsoft is banking on people's familiarity and loyalty to Windows to carry over to tablets and smart phones. That strategy might have worked 3 years ago but now it is too late. People are used to iOS and Android and like them. They are far more familiar with Android and iOS than they ever were with Windows and there are hundreds of thousands of apps to choose from. The Windows phone and tablet marketplace for apps is tiny by comparison. 



     


    That's assuming you run out and buy an ARM tablet.  All you're saying is that ARM-based Windows tablets have an uphill battle, and I agree with you there.  But if you buy an Intel based tablet or Windows 8 PC, all the software that ran under Windows 7 still runs under Windows 8.

  • Reply 18 of 59
    emacs72emacs72 Posts: 356member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Seankill View Post





    Vista is horrible. Period....


     


    i agree that Vista is among the weaker releases of Windows.  that said, however, if you equip the machine with 4GB of memory and disable UAC, the resultant is machine is okay.  with either Chrome, Opera or Firefox as the default web browser, gleaning information from the Internet on a Vista box will be a relatively safe(r) experience.

  • Reply 19 of 59


    However many users (10, 20, 30%???) could possibly use a smartphone or a tablet for what they do on a computer today.  That alone is going to hurt PC sales.  In the past a PC/Computer was their only choice.

  • Reply 20 of 59
    quadra 610quadra 610 Posts: 6,757member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Just_Me View Post


    At least vista has more users than OSx


     


    image



     


     


    Do you know what's *behind* the numbers? Vastly different forces drive Windows and OS X market share.


     


    Universal Licensing drives Windows. Default market-flooding with NO regard for User Experience once the OS leaves Redmond. 


     


    It can't be otherwise. Access to OS X costs at least $1000 (unless it's a Mini.)  The best in the industry doesn't come cheap. Apple is proud of their product and charges accordingly. And they're very successful in so doing. 


     


    Windows comes installed on everything from the good, to the bad, to the downright ugly. BY DEFAULT. This is *not* a compliment. Microsoft whores out their OS to all takers, meaning that they a long as license fees are paid, they don't care about the User Experience once it falls into OEMs' hands. Hence, the situation with Windows for over 20 years now. Which, in part, is why Microsoft feels compelled to publicly declare how very interested they are in beating little old Apple. 


     


    And what happens?  Macs running OS X, with their little market share, utterly and unequivocally BITCH-SLAP all the hardware vendors running Windows, year after year in Consumer Satisfaction reports. It's often not even a close race. Macs set the standard. 


     


    Amazing how the 6% can so thoroughly show the 90%+ of the industry exactly how it's done. 

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