On 2025-04-14, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <
ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
This article
<https://www.computerworld.com/article/3959350/apples-macs-are-powering-the-pc-markets-recovery.html>
quotes a Canalys research report to claim that “Apple’s Macs are
powering the PC market’s recovery”.
If you look at the Canalys report
<https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/worldwide-pc-shipments-q1-2025>, it
does seem like there has been an uptick compared to a year ago. But if
you compare over the past three years, you will see that the overall
trend remains downwards. In 2022, there was (near as I can estimate) something like 300 million PCs sold. Whereas over the last 4 quarters,
that has fallen to less than 260 million.
Further back over the years, I can remember when it was higher than
that. There was a time when Intel was shipping about 360 million x86
chips per year -- about a million per day. Those times are gone.
Back in 2005 or so, maybe even earlier, the value proposition in buying
a computer was getting online, surfing the Information Superhighway™
(ha, remember that?), exchanging email with distant friends, etc. And
it was pretty exciting. These days, the things people most want from a communication device are delivered by phones, and having a computer
isn't as useful. Even I toy with the idea of doing without, and I'm a
nerd.
Someday, a generation walking around with neural implants will laugh at
how quaint it was we all needed to carry around a device with us, and occasionally lose it, drop it in the lake, etc.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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