Why PC Sales Are Shrinking

Why PC sales are shrinking. Aivars Lode Avantce

Why PC Sales Are Shrinking


It was the fifth straight quarterly decline, indicating that the release of Windows 8 has done little to stanch the bloodletting in the market. Tablets are partly to blame because they basically killed the market for notebooks, but the upgrade cycle for PCs has been lengthening as well, sapping growth. Lenovo regained the top spot as the world's largest PC manufacturer. Read >
In the past eight months, they have grabbed a 20% to 25% market share of U.S. laptops that cost less than $300, making it the fastest-growing part of the PC industry. Overall, they had a 4% to 5% share of the market in the first quarter, up from 1% to 2% in 2012. Read >
Even with a more developed mobile ecosystem, Andrew Chen argues its harder than ever for services to gain traction among users. He provides four main reasons: product differentiation is more difficult in a crowded field, Cost-Per-Install has gone up, the app store operators pursue their own strategic goals, and investment money is drying up for new consumer mobile apps. Read >
The company released a version of the app for Nokia's Series 40 phones. Facebook and Twitter have made similar moves to makes their services available on feature phones, but neither of them arestruggling with revenue and user growth like Foursquare has. Read >
In an effort to spur development on their fledgling operating system, Samsung and Intel are offering $4 million in prizes for an app development contest. The first Tizen phones are expected to ship by in the fourth quarter. Read >
Maps are, in many ways, at the center of Google's mobile strategy, so any time it releases a new app it could signal a shift in strategy. It has better navigation, incorporating incident reporting, in addition to traffic conditions. It also includes an Explore feature that helps users finds restaurants, bars, etc around them. Read >
It won't matter much, however, unless sales start picking up soon. Read >
Its new platform now accounts for 16% of North American Blackberry traffic. Given lackluster BlackBerry 10 sales, it probably testifies to the fact that relatively few BlackBerry devices are still in circulation. Read >

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Gartner: PC Shipments Down 11% In The Second Quarter (Gartner)