Sluggish Holiday PC Sales Suggest Pandemic Boom Is Officially Over

The latest numbers are from IDC’s quarterly report with data from more than 90 countries. For the 4th quarter, PC shipments totaled 57.2 million units; a drop of 28.1% from Q4 last year. This number is similar to the amount of PCs shipped at the end of 2018 when Intel was struggling with supply chain issues. Previously in Q3, shipments declined 13.1%, so the drop-off in the final quarter was more than double that amount. Despite the sluggish sales, shipment totals for the whole year were still above pre-pandemic levels at 292.3 million computers. In 2019 there were 261 million PCs shipped according to both IDC and Gartner.

The report notes that average selling prices (ASP) of computers were slashed last quarter due to excess inventory. However, that was not enough to overcome the headwinds facing the industry right now. That includes both economic uncertainties and people who bought a new PC during the pandemic or upgraded their existing machine (*looks in mirror*). Since these issues will continue into 2023, the analysts describe the consumer PC industry this year as a “wildcard.”

Despite an uncertain outlook in the near term, IDC’s analysts believe things will begin to turn around in late 2023, with continuing momentum into 2024 due to several factors. The biggest is Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 1o Pro and Home in October 2025. In advance of that, many people will likely go out and buy a new PC. Also by that time, people who upgraded during the pandemic will be ready for a new computer. Maybe video card prices will have reached sane levels by then.

One interesting statistic from the report is out of all the PC manufacturers, only Apple showed growth for the year. Although, it was pretty meager at just 2.5%. That compares to overall losses across the board totaling 16.5% for the industry. HP was hardest hit year-over-year with a 25.3% decline in shipments. Lenovo held onto its top spot with a 23.3% market share.

Continue reading

New Study Suggests Dark Matter Doesn’t Exist

Most scientists currently believe the iron grip of gravity is augmented by dark matter, an invisible material that makes up about 85 percent of the universe. A new study makes the case for an alternative model, one in which dark matter doesn't exist and gravity works a little differently than we thought.

Rumors Suggest Nvidia Might Re-Launch RTX 2060, RTX 2060 Super

There are rumors Nvidia might re-introduce the RTX 2060 and 2060 Super to meet demand for GPUs. At this point, we hope they do.

New Surface Laptop 4 Leak Suggests AMD, Intel Models Launch Next Week

Microsoft is likely to launch new Surface Laptop 4 models based on both Intel and AMD CPUs. New hardware could drop as soon as next week.

RGB Keyboard Support Suggests Gaming Chromebooks Are Coming Soon

Little by little, more powerful processors and faster storage have made their way into Chromebooks, and now companies may be gearing up to give them more gaming cred with RGB keyboards. There's only one reason to do this: Steam-enabled gaming Chromebooks are on the horizon.