Saturday, August 23, 2014

Why Are PC Sales Up And Tablet Sales Down?

By Peter Yared

When iPads first came out, they were hailed as the undoing of the PC. Finally, a cheap and reliable computing device for the average user instead of the complicated, quirky PC. After a few years of strong growth for iOS and Android tablets and a corresponding decrease in PC sales, the inverse is suddenly true: PC sales are up and tablet sales are “crashing.” What happened?

The tablet slowdown shouldn’t be a surprise given that tablets have hardly improved beyond relatively superficial changes in size, screen resolution, and processor speed. The initial market for tablets is now saturated: grandparents and kids have them, people bought them as Sonos controllers and such, and numerous households have them around for reading. People that want tablets have them, and there’s just no need to upgrade because they more than adequately perform their assigned tasks.

Businesses and consumers alike are again purchasing PCs, and Mac sales are on the rise year-over-year. Businesses in particular are forced to upgrade older PCs now that Windows XP is no longer supported. When purchasing a new PC, the main driver to choose a PC versus a tablet is fairly obvious: If you are creating any type of content regularly, you need a keyboard, a larger screen, and (for most businesses) Microsoft Office.

For the tablet category to continue to grow, tablets need to move beyond what Chris Dixon calls the “toy phase” ...

Read the rest here.

1 comment:

  1. Pretty well nails it. I have a Mac for photo/video editing and storage. My iPhone/iPad combo gets used for everything else. I've been using them for years and have upgraded each once but have no plans to do so again for a very long time.

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