The total PC market (including tablets) had 23% year-on-year growth | Hacker News Reader

The total PC market (including tablets) had 23% year-on-year growth

canalys.com

58 pointselsewhen87 comments

Lenovo is quite successful. I have to wonder, why did IBM sell its laptop and PC businesses to them, later its server business as well? Lenovo got not only the brand, but also advanced production lines, technology, engineering and sales teams. What did IBM get? A few billion bucks, and 18.5% share of Lenovo, which they've largely sold off.

Maybe IBM should have invested that money into fixing what was wrong with their profitability and management model. Hire Lenovo to manage the product lines or do a joint venture like GM-Toyota.

It's sad to see a once great company just give up the fight.

A lot of this is investor pressure and price/dividends at any cost. Consulting has a lot higher margins and is easier to fire in a downturn. They gave up the fight a long time ago. Invest in the future or you won't have one.

This assumes IBM had the institutional competencies and structure to make that division work as well as Lenovo has. It's quite possible, and IMO likely, that IBM's former laptop and small server/workstation business is doing so well because IBM sold these lines to a company that has the correct core competencies.

It's a common problem with companies like IBM and GE that try to go or stay too broad. It's hard to stay top-tier in several verticals at once without decentralizing the company to the point that each vertical is defectively an independent company anyway. Google has tried this with the Alphabet reorganization. GE partially did that with its quasi-independent business units, many of which it ended up selling anyway. IBM seems, from the outside, to be too monolithic to effectively divest a subsidiary. I think it will be telling what it does with Red Hat.

Indeed the phenomena of large highly diverse organizations trying to be experts, i.e. number one or number 2, in every sub domain is really untenable past a certain size. Even the casual observer begins to notice the pretense of competence versus actual competence. Perhaps the underlying forces are structural.

> ...each vertical is defectively an independent company...

Not sure if that was a typo or not, but it's pretty funny either way :)

> Lenovo got not only the brand, but also advanced production lines

I may be mistaken, but I thought at the time of the sale, Lenovo was already doing the manufacturing?

Yee

Only some of it, if i remember correctly. The classic business-oriented Thinkpad lines actually did not move to Lenovo factories for years after the acquisition closed, since Lenovo wanted to get right the knowledge-transfer and to avoid spooking customers. Indeed, the first lines of full-Lenovo laptops felt cheap and were widely panned, it took a while for them to match the classic Thinkpad reputation.

I don't know the back story but it's also possible:

IBM recognized "we're not the guys to do this anymore" and there was more value selling it and focusing on what they think they can do well (or what they thought they could do)?

Then from there Lenovo was able to focus on what they do well.

I really do think that a lot of companies would benefit from recognizing what their core competencies are and really doing those things.

We see big name companies pick up products and sort of side step into similar markets or even just remain in markets that ... they're just not good at.

I'm thinking if companies like Cisco's efforts to get into consumer gear of various forms but still coming from a very different world of B2B, and working in a market they already dominate type stuff.

I wonder what the non-gaming desktop market is like now. I developed for 15 years on a desktop and my latest machine for the first time is a laptop. They used to be twice as expensive and half as fast but now it’s a smaller difference so being able to move it is worth it, even though I almost never do.

It's funny because I'm the opposite. Started doing development on a desktop computer (family computer), as soon as I became a paid developer, started using laptops, first Macbooks and later others. Bought my first desktop computer for work about a year ago and couldn't be happier.

Doing any sort of creative work is just unbeatable on desktop computers. And development work is also much nicer. Even if the specifications are the same / below the ones of laptops, the computer runs faster as the cooling is much better.

There was a bit of a plateau in the last years when intels processors stagnated but they could still improve their laptop parts. Now you can get a decent 8-core laptop that isn’t much slower than a desktop which might have 10-12 cores max.

The new Ryzens may have ended this, and made 130W again usable to get more perf and cores and not just heat.

Being able to shift locations even if just temporarily is still great. Perhaps the solution is to have a beefy desktop and a tiny but weak laptop with good battery, and just remote in to a desktop when on the move.

> Being able to shift locations even if just temporarily is still great. Perhaps the solution is to have a beefy desktop and a tiny but weak laptop with good battery, and just remote in to a desktop when on the move.

This is what I do - my 'main' general purpose computer is a Linux-Chromebook and most of my 'work' is processed on the server stack at home.

As I wrote elsewhere in this thread [1], the data in the article shows desktop computing down significantly in Q3 2020. That came as a surprise to me. I would have expected it to be up since so many are stuck at home and desktop computing remains the premium home computing experience. If you've got a good work desk, desktop computing will push the value of each dollar spent on hardware further. Apparently most people still prefer to pick up a computer and move from room to room during their lockdown. That's not compelling for me, but it presumably is for others.

I have a 3900X desktop workstation and a 4900HS laptop, an Asus G14. You are right that the performance delta for most tasks is not as large as it was 15 years ago. In fact, for routine work, they seem about the same. The advantages to a desktop are things that I personally find valuable: ease of connecting many large displays (I use three 30 inch 16:10 monitors), ease of equipping large amounts of memory (32GB is a piece of cake, 64+GB is also easy on a desktop), tidier connectivity (everything is routed to a box hidden away behind the desk), no thermal throttling (always the same performance regardless of workload), quiet (larger and more powerful cooling), etc.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25083580

A desktop is only a premium experience if you're an engineer of some sort and really need the horsepower...

Just about everyone else on the planet sees a desktop as a huge space waster.

For me it's a huge ergonomic and health gain using a desktop after using a laptop for 10 years. To the point of being life changing again.

Using a docking station there is zero difference in ergonomics. But you still can move around if you want.

I’d rather avoid it. I have orders of magnitude better input devices on the desktop. I’d rather not keep switching back and forwards as using a laptop is like doing stuff with oven gloves on.

> That came as a surprise to me. I would have expected it to be up since so many are stuck at home and desktop computing remains the premium home computing experience.

Couldn't that be down to what data they track? From the looks of it they are only tracking OEM vendor sales of pre-built desktop systems.

But what I've observed these past months during the pandemic is that a lot of people have picked up PC building, an observation that's collaborated by new hardware (Nvidia Ampeere cards, AMD Zen 3) being in super high demand to such a degree that in many places supply is struggling to fill demand.

I think those who can, will. At least in this space. I'm on my third desktop build this year. One for myself, one for my daughter and one for someone else who is not paying for commuting now and has disposable income to join the PC gaming club.

With the WFH situation, I have friends who bought new desktops just for work since laptops tend to be more expensive, perform worse and portability is no longer a priority.

this is obviously anecdotal.

I have 3 desktops.

1x at work 1x at home for work 1x home for gamming

I stared my life with desktops in 90s, then switched to laptops in 00s, but went back to desktops about 7 years ago.

It just more convenient for me. At work when I finish I just lock the screen saver and walk away. Having 64gb of ram is also nice, for all the VM's I need to run. Desktops if not build for gaming can be quieter than equivalent laptops, etc.

Same at home. I used to have only 1 computer at home. But for fun(i do electronics and some programming on my own) I use linux, for games I use windows, got tired of dualbooting, so its just easier to have 1 dedicated computer for everything.

I still have my laptop somewhere, but rarely use it, since when I am not at home or office, my phone is enough for most situations.

Silence, not messing with cables every day, more ram + My computer is in the same state as I left it for work are my main motivators.

Gaming pc is just mz hobby so i probably shoudn't even count it.

PS: oh and I forgot storage. having multiple ssd's is just so convinient.

Chromebook is the rare HW consumer device that Google created that is a success. Not just that it made a dent into Apple's ecosystem and is now the most popular product in education.

They are mostly popular in the USA, aren't they?

I wonder how much that is caused by the fact that they don't sell them outside USA. It's really really hard to actually get a Chromebook in Europe, the availability is pretty poor.

That’s very weird and unfortunate since poorer countries have a much more desperate need for inexpensive computers. Any idea of the rationale?

It's really not. Schools are crammed full of them in the UK as well.

Google are exceptionally poor ( To say the least ) at distribution for a company of their size. Just Look at Pixel Phone.

Yeah, people keep talking about this but I’ve never, ever seen Chromebooks in the wild in my corner of England.

A lot of school districts buy tons of them for students to use, but I'm not sure how many individuals actually choose to buy a Chromebook over a traditional laptop.

I wonder if much of Apple's desktop success came from educating a generation of students with Macs... and I wonder if that bodes well for Chromebooks into the future.

Before Macs, the Apple II series we're enormously successful in schools throughout the 80s and early 90s.

School got our kids chromebooks for Covid.

Nothing but endless problems with them.

We replaced them with ...”Chromebooks” They work great for kids.

400 dollars seems to be the spot where they are usable.

I wonder how much of that is for gaming. The growth and demand for high end gaming parts has been unprecedented. Ie Nvidia's 3080, just about impossible to buy, chaotic launch, and AMD's 5900x - very hot property now.

It used to be people were blaming the crypto miners for GPU shortages but that doesn’t seem to be the case now.

Apparently not a whole lot since given the data they show, desktop computing was hit hard. I admit this came as a surprise to me.

I had assumed, from a combination of the title and my intuition about 2020, that desktop computing would be enjoying a resurgence. My thinking: many of us are stuck at home and desktop computing is the premium computing experience—especially for enthusiasts, gamers, content creators, engineers, programmers, etc. We're no longer carrying a computer to and from an office each day, so the value of a laptop is diminished. In fact, when my laptop died in April, I didn't replace it for several months because my home workstation is what I'm using every day and I wasn't traveling anywhere.

I suppose enthusiasts don't really count for a big enough market to lift the numbers. Still I would have expected 2020 to be flat on desktop computers, not dramatically down.

I'm guessing that a big chunk of the desktop market was in corporates and they have been switching to laptops while people work from home. That was certainly the case in my wife's office.

That's a good point. And that must have been large enough to easily more than offset any increase in demand from the home desktop computing enthusiast.

For my company, since we didn't want to use a bunch of money to buy new equipment during an economic squeeze, we let the programmers (essentially everyone) take their workstations home, and most did.

That has been the steady trend for a while. Desktops in offices have been slowly dwindling down to two categories:

* Creatives who need more horsepower than a mobile workstation can provide

* Hourly employees with minimal computing needs who won't use their computer outside of their cubical

Anyone in the middle is better served by a laptop

I'll point out that this appears to be measuring sales from OEMs.

I don't think it's capturing anything about people who build their own system, so whether or not that market has grown probably isn't reflected in this.

I think this one can be chalked up to COVID and the urgent shift to remote life.

- Some lucky folks took home shiny new hardware from their employers to connect to the office

- Some unlucky folks had to pay out-of-pocket because on their first day working from home they learned Teams doesn't run on a 13 year old Macbook

- And yes, some folks splurged on new hardware for COVID-compliant fun (myself included), but newfound imperatives like having to work from home will more effectively drive sales than a shift in taste

Absolutely none of it. None of the categories that grew in demand are compatible with an RTX 3080.

Covid WFH bump?

Sounds like mostly learn-from-home increases. Tablets and chromebooks are the biggest winners.

"gimme the cheapest thing that'll run zoom"

I'd bet people with school-age kids are significantly more disproportionately affected by the need to buy a device this year. Few schools already had devices kids could bring home, and families with children skew lower income.

By comparison, people who can work from home often already have work-provided computing devices, and for those who don't, they are higher income and likely already had a suitable device.

"families with children skew lower income"

Is this because lower income -> more kids, or is it binary, and lower income -> higher probability of has_kids=true?

It's a sort of complex but fairly well understood demographic trend globally if you want to look into it. There's not really one clear cause.

In general more educated people and professionals have kids later and have fewer of them. Having kids earlier is also a significant barrier to completing education and entering a high income profession so there's an effect there too. This isn't all of it just the two most clear examples.

I mostly mean that they are lower income in comparison to those who can WFH. But yes, income and fertility also tend to have a negative correlation;

Both, and income is often measured as a function of family size (e.g., poverty line for singles is lower than for families).

In other words: lower income folks are more likely to have kids, more likely to have more kids, and each subsequent kid lowers relative income (according to most income metrics).

Also because by the time women reach their peak earning years they are physically unable to have children (even women who choose not to have kids don't reach their peak until after they are done with kids). While men are able to have children they are typically done as well.

Actually, in Germany the opposite is true. The median net household income ladder is:

1. Single household (lowest income) 2. Single parent with one kid 3. Two adults, no kids 4. Families with one kid 5. Families with two kids (highest income)

Now obviously there is a correlation with age. And also income and disposable income are two different things. But I don't think the story is quite as simple as GP seems to make it.

Apple almost the #1 PC maker. Wow.

With the swap Apple Silicon that should be an easy move into first as there are many wanting to make the jump.

However they did include tablets in that one chart

> With the swap Apple Silicon that should be an easy move into first as there are many wanting to make the jump.

Source for this? Normal users don't give a dime or don't even know about different processors (and these are the vast majority). Fan-boys will always upgrade to the latest no matter what. Prosumers might be interested or not in the change depending on the audience, and the same applies to professionals.

Being able to run their iOS and iPadOS apps on Mac is something that matters to the consumers and that’s thanks to silicon (could’ve been done otherwise too, but that’s how it’s marketed).

> Normal users don't give a dime or don't even know about different processors (and these are the vast majority).

Intel's marketing in the 90s is a case study in how to make 'normal users' care, not necessarily about different processors, but about one manufacturer's in particular.

"Intel Inside" was hugely successful at turning 'normal users' sentiment away from any competitors.

*PC and tablet maker. If you subtract the # of tablets, Apple is far behind Lenovo, HP and Co. Strange that they lump these two together.

What's strange about it? Tablets are becoming another version of PCs, especially with all the Apple news lately. Would you remove all the yoga-books and other convertibles from Lenovo sales? Form factor isn't a differentiator here anymore. Tablets are becoming general purpose computing devices.

Just as MacBooks, which also are becoming "general purpose computing" devices?

True, there are some tablets that can be used for tasks usually done on a PC. Still there's an unknown percentage of tablets mostly for media consumption in there. So they're lumping together productivity/all-purpose devices with media consumption devices.

A lot of "standard" PCs are also mostly used just for media consumption.

Yes, naturally all-purpose includes media consumption as well.

At that point it’s not even worth differentiating between the two. Some people use laptops for work, some people use them for entertainment, many people use them for both. Some people use tablets for work, some people use them for entertainment, many people use them for both. You can’t just say “laptops are for work and tablets are for entertainment” because that’s just not true.

That's not what I'm saying though. I'm saying all PCs are general purpose devices, but many tablets aren't. That's why it makes sense to differentiate between the two and not lump them together.

Why aren’t they? Because they can’t be, or because you think they aren’t used in that way?

I’ve been using an iPad for nearly 100% of my work over the past two years (until this summer, just a regular 9.7” iPad), and I know of developers who have been doing the same for at least nine years [1]. And these days it’s even more “general purpose”, being able to develop locally on the iPad with things like Play.js and Pythonista running locally. Blink on iPad even has a local shell built in, and of course pretty much all Android devices can drop to their local root shell too.

I guess you’re going to have to define what you mean by “general purpose computer” because pretty much every definition I find online includes smartphones and tablets [2][3][4]:

> A general purpose computer is built to perform a variety of tasks, including the most frequent computing tasks, in a reasonably efficiently manner. It can store and execute multiple programs in its internal storage. Personal computers such as tablets, smartphones, notebooks and desktops are examples of general purpose computers.

The difference it seems like you’re making is that laptops are general purpose computers because you want to define them that way, and phones/tablets are not, again, because that’s how you want to define it. So please, define what “general purpose” means and why your definition doesn’t match anyone else’s definition?

What do people get out of gatekeeping the most ridiculous things? Any iPad or Android tablet can install generic applications, browse the web, play games and music and video, do word processing, check email, store and retrieve arbitrary data, edit photos, connect to SSH... you know, general purpose computing. So again... what is the point of differentiating?

[1] https://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook...

[2] https://www.reference.com/world-view/general-purpose-compute...

[3] https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/general-purpose-comp...

[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zkrr97h/revision/1

The guy in [1] is SSHing into a different machine, which is running... Linux.

From the same article:

>I fundamentally believe that most people don’t want to rearrange windows, babysit their own general purpose computers or back up their data.

So for me and apparently also the author, in this context "general purpose" is more of a crutch, to describe something that can do everything a normal computer can do. Most tablets can only do a subset of that.

To rephrase my point: There are many tablets that can only be used for media consumption. There are some tablets that come close to general purpose devices. In contrast, all PCs are general purpose devices. Hence it makes sense to list them separately in a statistic.

I spent all day on my MacBook SSH’d into a remote Linux machine, does that mean the MacBook isn’t a general purpose computer? Does the ability to SSH into another machine mean your computer is not “general purpose”? Because he also used a lot of native apps in those posts. And if you want a local shell on iOS, like I said the app Blink will give you that.

You keep saying “many tablets can’t” but which ones? And why? Android and iOS can both be used as general purpose computers as I’ve mentioned. What other tablets are common enough but limited enough to make the distinction? You keep dodging this question and still pushing this complete falsehood even after you’ve been proven wrong. You’ve offered no proof or defense of your theory despite being asked directly and being proven wrong directly.

At least iPads and maybe android tablets let you rearrange windows although you don’t have to (which is the point). They let you “babysit” whatever that means, although you don’t have to. They let you back up your own data (my iPad backs up to OneDrive, not iCloud) although you don’t have to.

What is this “most tablets” when both Android and iPad allows you to do everything you’ve mentioned? Again... it sounds awfully like “I don’t want them to be computers so I’m going to claim they’re not” which was false when you first said it and now is starting to get pretty ridiculous as I keep showing you that you’re wrong.

> Does the ability to SSH into another machine mean your computer is not “general purpose”?

Sorry, but this tells me you're not arguing in good faith, so I'll disengage. Peace out.

> Tablets are becoming another version of PCs, especially with all the Apple news lately.

> Form factor isn't a differentiator here anymore. Tablets are becoming general purpose computing devices.

You've referenced Apple specifically in relation to all this.

Note that Apple's official position disagrees with you, as seen in their lawsuit against Epic, and their claim that iOS devices are more like app consoles than general purpose computing devices.

The most worrying part here is that we're already sliding into a world where we're accepting these walled gardens as general purpose computing devices, when the manufacturer is stating definitively that they do not see it this way. The limitations we're imposing on ourselves is a shame.

(EDIT: to add, I'm on my third iPad now and continue to be very happy with them. I'm part of the problem.)

> Note that Apple's official position disagrees with you

I don’t think it’s quite that simple, as Apple has at least two different “official positions”. The first being that the iPad is more computer than you need (see their marketing around iPad, trucks vs cars, iPad Pro, etc). The second being what you described in their legal battle.

If you believe their marketing, iPad is 100% a computer. Just a different kind of computer than the Mac.

Sure, a Yoga has a touchscreen and a polyamorous hinge mechanism, but it doesn't seem comparable in any real sense to an iPad.

> Tablets are becoming another version of PCs, especially with all the Apple news lately.

That's what Apple wants people to think, but in the real world I'd argue that's highly suspect.

iPads are closer to glorified entertainment consoles than anything else. (They're 100% locked down, just like a video game console. Their compatibility is artificially limited, just like video game consoles. They're sold exactly like video game consoles, on game console lifecycles, with a game-console-like business model and revenue sources). Apple itself seems to agree, Apple claims the iPad is a video game console in their legal fight with Epic when defending Apple's monopoly over the software market.

If anything, it would make slightly more sense to compare iPad sales to Nintendo Switch sales, than to compare iPad sales to Laptop / Desktop PCs.

Other than all the software glitches and the increasing number of bugs with every release, Macbooks still have the best (& possibly the biggest?) track pad I have ever used on a laptop. Personally, I am yet to find a terminal front-end on Linux that is as feature rich as iTerm. Also, if you're all in on the Apple ecosystem with a watch/iPhone/iPad, the Continuity features work pretty well too.

the increasing number of bugs with every release

I don't think that's new, early versions of OS/X were riddled with problems. I remember my first iMac would kernel panic every time I unplugged a USB stick, even after ejecting it.

Software-wise/productivity-wise apple is pretty bad though.

Snapping windows to sides(and to quarter of the screen), splitting windows across multiple monitors are two biggest offenders imo. Microsoft dealt with them perfectly. Also, using shortcuts to move windows between different monitors, and maximizing windows.

Also Mac is constantly running slow for me, to the point where I need to reboot it every couple of days. Opening a new tab in chrome can take seconds.

I've never had problems like this on windows/Linux.

There are some good Mac window managers out there.

Can you recommend any?

Company policy mostly forbids installing third party software, but if there is one that's trustworthy, I can probably install it.

In that case they'd probably be more comfortable with something provided through the app store. Try BetterSnapTool for $2. It's pleasantly customizable.

Microsoft took ages to get multiple desktops and notifications right and are still lacking in other areas. I guess both of them even out counting all pros and cons.

Regarding the slowness try weeding out third-party background apps and using Safari.

I hardly have any 3rd party software. Chrome and iTerm is all I am running. I have installed xcode and Android studio, but both were unbearably slow, so now I'm remoting to my main computer. I have plenty of extensions in chrome though.

(Un)fortunately I can't be using Safari, company requires chrome.

Also, I am charging Mac from the right side, because that apparently matters :-)))

(I have Mac pro 2017 or 2018 with 16gb ram)

I use a Mac and windows everyday and I find the third party windows management tools such as ShiftIt, Spectacle, Magnet, etc to be much better than anything that Windows 10 has built-in.

Primarily, I can never seem to predict what pressing win+Left will actually do. Sometimes it moves the window to the left half. Other times it moves to the right half. And some other times it does nothing until I press win+right first. Overall I think it’s a terrible window management system. Sure MacOS has nothing built in but it takes about 5-10 mins to install and configure a much better system.

This really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who uses both apple's hardware and hardware you get from everywhere else.

I've been using multiple macs for 6 years, 0 problems.

I've been using PCs bought from computer stores for 20 years, each one has had multiple hardware problems, each one.

I have no interest in taking hardware apart, blowing air through it, re-applying thermal paste, diagnosing which component is overheating, figuring out why it's so fucking loud, figuring out which part died that's causing my computer to no longer turn on and so on.

All that bullshit, on top of Windows and its awful operating system.

The day Apple finally gets their shit together and gets gamers on their platform, windows PCs are going to perish.

I love the iPad. However, I wish someone would hurry up and invent the future where it is a better productivity tool.

A better voice UI plus gestures:

https://atap.google.com/soli/

What's the likelihood of Windows on ARM Boot Camp for iPads? 1%? 0.1%?

TL;DR

> Client PC products by year-on-year shipment growth, Q3 2020

  Desktop -32%, laptop +30%, tablet +42%

Makes sense- desktops are stranded at work now generally. I'm one of the few lucky ones at mine to be able to grab mine and take it back home- most everyone else w/a desktop is using VDI or moved to a laptop.

In case anyone else was wondering what's a VDI?

"Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is defined as the hosting of desktop environments on a central server."

Seems like remote desktop in the cloud (or on-prem) but in aggregate rather than 1:1 hardware.

One year after the pandemic ends: The total PC market (including tablets) had 23% YoY crunch.

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