Here interesting data point is that even as PC sales declined by 21%, the Mac sales have NOT increased by same margin. Reports says Mac sales grew only by 5% although these two rates are not comparable because later is % of Mac sales while former is % of PC sales which is much higher
.
The reason people used to throw away their working PCs to buy new ones was newer better hardware and hyped up new OS releases. I think PC sales decline is greatly contributed by no new compelling hardware factor. The OS releases of course are less and less compelling because most tasks happens in browser which works fine even on old PCs. If IE was only game in town, people would perhaps still need to get new OS but that's not the case anymore.
I guess we are entering new era of PC/Mac refresh cycles were people are going to replace their machines only when it stops working instead of just because new release arrived. People would rather spend $500 on getting a tablet that they don't have than replacing their PC that is already working fine to check emails and browse the web.
Interesting thing here is that Wall street analysts would probably going to extrapolate this incorrectly instead of seeing that this is new "normal".
One reason that might explain why you don't see that decline on Macs is because is being cancelled for all those people trying to develop for iOS devices.
What it is true is that we don't need new hardware in the same way we used to. For instance, my 5 years old laptop is running faster with Win8 beta that it did with Win 7, and that is the only PC I use at home and probably that won't change any time soon. Before that I used to change PCs in a two years cycle.
The reason people used to throw away their working PCs to buy new ones was newer better hardware and hyped up new OS releases. I think PC sales decline is greatly contributed by no new compelling hardware factor. The OS releases of course are less and less compelling because most tasks happens in browser which works fine even on old PCs. If IE was only game in town, people would perhaps still need to get new OS but that's not the case anymore.
I guess we are entering new era of PC/Mac refresh cycles were people are going to replace their machines only when it stops working instead of just because new release arrived. People would rather spend $500 on getting a tablet that they don't have than replacing their PC that is already working fine to check emails and browse the web.
Interesting thing here is that Wall street analysts would probably going to extrapolate this incorrectly instead of seeing that this is new "normal".