Centroids: At the risk of sounding quaint, you know, asking obvious questions that have empirical answers, here are a couple of thoughts designed to be ignored: Has anyone done serious research into the ways that today's PC owners actually use PCs? That is, clearly there is a great divide between people who rely on Personal Computers and those who strictly are iPhone and tablet people. Yes, there is overlap; X number of people use both. However, let us start with people for whom PCs are dominant in their computer lives. What do they most need and what would they most like to have in their PCs? Maybe this question is primarily a Microsoft question, but, for sure, it IS a Microsoft question. The reason to ask it is that if MS is treating the computer market as one market, not as two with very different interests, then it is making a rather large mistake that is costing it billions. For all I can say, MS already has carried out what may be called "customer differentiation research." Then again, maybe it has not. Has anyone read anything that provides an answer? So far, I have not seen any articles on this subject. A final point, since there is no way to reach Microsoft, at least there is not unless you are willing to wait weeks for a reply, in what way does this kind of "wall off the customer" policy make any sense? Just thought I'd ask. Billy ========================= Real Clear Politics / Real Clear Technology
October 10, 2013 PC Market Tanking By _Greg Scoblete_ (http://www.realcleartechnology.com/authors/greg_scoblete/) A pair of new reports show the PC market in continued free fall at the hands of smartphones and tablets. According to _research firm IDC_ (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24375913) , worldwide PC shipments dropped 8 percent to 81.6 million units in the third quarter. This decline was actually not as bad as IDC was initially predicting due to an uptake in business purchases and the roll-out of Windows 8.1 units. Still, IDC saw little hope for growth in the PC market in 2014. "The third quarter was pretty close to forecast, which unfortunately doesn't reflect much improvement in the PC market, or potential for near-term growth," said Loren Loverde, Vice President Worldwide PC Trackers in a statement. "Whether constrained by a weak economy or being selective in their tech investments, buyers continue to evaluate options and delay PC replacements. Despite being a little ahead of forecast, and the work that's being done on new designs and integration of features like touch, the third quarter results suggest that there's still a high probability that we will see another decline in worldwide shipments in 2014." IDC identified Lenovo as the world's market leader, followed by HP, Dell, Acer and Asus. Meanwhile, Gartner _tabulated_ (http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2604616) an 8.6 percent decline in quarterly PC shipments -- the sixth consecutive quarter PC sales have flagged. Principal analyst Mikako Kitagawa put the blame squarely on mobile devices. "Consumers' shift from PCs to tablets for daily content consumption continued to decrease the installed base of PCs both in mature as well as in emerging markets.," Kitagawa said in a statement released with Gartner's numbers. "A greater availability of inexpensive Android tablets attracted first-time consumers in emerging markets, and as supplementary devices in mature markets." Still, in the U.S. at least the picture is a bit less gloomy. IDC found shipments essentially flat for the quarter while Gartner registered a 3.5 percent uptick thanks to a new crop of Haswell-based PCs and new convertible designs. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
