Home » Technology » The PC market is in crisis: sales have been declining for some time, manufacturers are not doing well

The PC market is in crisis: sales have been declining for some time, manufacturers are not doing well

Just another crisis in a row

It should be noted first of all that the computer world has already experienced many crises and always recovers from them in bracketsoften aided by the fact that a new class of goods, a new market, has suddenly arisen under its protection, which, on the contrary, has propelled sales to other dizzying heights.

If we let go a little what we include in the world of computers, we can mention in recent decades the arrival of digital cameras, the arrival of Netflix and similar services, the arrival of iTunes or Spotify, the arrival of the iPhone and Android , the regular arrival of next generation game consoles, the arrival of subscriptions to digital services and software or perhaps the arrival of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. All these new markets they kicked sales always go on.

But this is a different time. The time we spent about a year and a half under some minor restrictions, some major ones imposed by a virus. The time we spend the last few months in a row uncertainty resulting from the ongoing conflict less than a few hundred from our borders. Gone are the days of buying cheap CPUs and cheap GPUs and carelessly indulging in photo development or gaming, even if only temporarily.

No wonder then, right? Honza Olsan it outputs a text that says so graphics card sales have fallen the most since the 2009 crisis with the fact that Radeons are historic the worst To share. More on this and GPUs in general in a moment.

Even an old PC is fine

It has several causes. The two main ones can be seen in people and companies they do not need to be changed technique already 20 years ago, when the next generation of CPUs could be ten percent faster and thus bring significantly faster execution of applications for users. Today the difference between the 8-core 1st and 4th generation Ryzen, or between the 8th and 13th generation Intel six cores, can be measured as “very significant”, but from the point of view of the majority of users, it is insignificant. Anyone who bought, say, a decent 4-core machine with an Intel CPU 10 years ago can still perform the vast majority of common user tasks on that machine today without difficulty.

The second cause is buried in the rising costs of manufacturing technologies and rising costs of materials and human resources. Let’s face it, in terms of the most advanced generations of FinFET EUV lithography, it is only Taiwan’s TSMC that is capable of producing a wide range of chips in sufficient quantity with sufficient yield. It did monopoly for the production of powerful chips, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s ARM with Apple and Qualcomm logos or AMD Ryzen-type CPUs and Radeon or GeFroce-type GPUs. No one else in the world matches its pace of innovation. Not Samsung, not Intel – and besides them, not even anyone else can be considered, no longer exists. Perhaps the Chinese SMIC, but here too the big unknown is introduced into all the equations by the American sanctions.

For a more accurate overview of how sales of individual products and brands are declining, I recommend already mentioned article on Cnews. Very briefly, it’s a bit of a surprise when it comes to the GPU area He has failed Nvidia, AMD has gone down significantly with Radeon and, conversely, Intel has grown a lot. The reasons are simple, Nvidia was preparing a next generation RTX 4000 and the current RTX 3000 series was and still is quite expensive.

Market share of GPU manufacturers in Q3 2022

Author: Jon Peddie Research

AMD is expecting the launch of the Radeon RX 7000, which will be a big leap forward, and the sales of the RX 6000 match that. Intel therefore is a constant that rules the market with its integrated graphics cores, the influence of the start of sales of Arc family desktop cards will not be so significant here. It’s not a disaster for AMD, it’s also well powered by Xbox and Playstation and, unlike Nvidia, it hasn’t bet on amateur design connectors 16-pin PCIe power supply.

But I digress a bit, I would like to return to a general trend that affects GPUs as well as CPUs: the market is simply saturated and people rather save. Many potential users who bought new CPU AND GPU products 10 years ago often run on the machine of that time and bought a game console for their children, or they don’t play games or have transferred these activities to their smartphone.

PC processor sales according to Jon Peddie Research

PC processor sales according to Jon Peddie Research

Author: Jon Peddie Research

Is the PC moving from the center of attention to the periphery?

In recent years, the classic desktop market has been rather characterized by signs of decline, here and there interrupted by stagnation or moderate growth, but in general the manufacturers they fight on a declining market. Just like Minolta once did with Dynax at the end of the cinema era. Just like Pentax today with its DSLR cameras. Just like VHS and DVD rental in the age of DivX, BitTorrent and Netflix.

The PC market is no longer a crop like it was at the turn of the century, and moreover, Apple is taking a bite out of the traditional x86 brands of the world and in the future they will bite more and more arm processors. We’ll recognize this not only by the feasibility of the Raspberry Pi single-board computer phenomenon, but also by the way Microsoft is pushing harder and harder to run Windows on ARM. At least he’s been working on this with Qualcomm over a five-year period.

Doesn’t mean the PCs are doomed to oblivion. They’ll always be here, just like LPs, movies, pixel art, wind-up wristwatches, or Old Rye Hunting. They will be here for fans, enthusiasts, nostalgics who just don’t want Spotify, Lumix, Unreal Engine, iWatch or Jim Beam Honey.

It will be a long time before a person feels as weird in front of his ATX desktop PC as he does today with a flexareta on the slopes. The market will eventually recover from the current protracted slump, because it cannot be otherwise. Our addiction to computers is almost absolute. Perhaps it would be nice if Mr. Neff sat down in front of a typewriter (sorry, desktop PC) and Tma 3.0 was born.

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