Desktops aren't dead! Lenovo PC business increases in past 12 months

in hardware on 2014-05-21 20:32 (#3MJ)

It was only a year or two ago when every journalist on earth suddenly went into fits, calling it the new age of tablet/mobile computing and assuring us the desktop would soon be a niche industry for has-beens and old fashioned losers. Lenovo would beg to differ. In fact, they've sold 55 million computers in the year ending March 2014 . They also sold 50 million smartphones and 9 million tablets, so there's no doubt mobile computing is increasingly going to take a huge chunk of the market. From the article:

Looking at the numbers by product line, Lenovo's worldwide laptop PC business increased in the fourth fiscal quarter by 16 percent to $4.8bn, accounting for 51 percent of the company's overall sales. Despite the general market declining, its desktop PC sales for the same period increased 14 percent to $2.7bn, or 29 percent of the company's overall sales worldwide. The company's sales of smartphones and digital home products jumped to $1.3bn, or 13 percent of the company's overall sales, and Lenovo said its worldwide smartphone shipments grew 59.4 percent in the fourth quarter.

But the world's largest PC maker would like you to know the age of the desktop computer has absolutely not come to an end.

Tomorrow's headline (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-21 20:44 (#1TM)

There's a lot of has-beens and old fashioned losers out there!

The doomsayers are wrong again (Score: 4, Insightful)

by skarjak@pipedot.org on 2014-05-21 21:30 (#1TQ)

People's claims that desktops would die seems to me to be more of an attempt to click-bait than anything. I understand that people like new things, and new is mobile right now, but as long as the desktop can accomplish things that laptops and mobile devices can't, of course it will stay alive.

Gamers, artists, programmers and other professionals still need desktops, so people will keep fabricating them.

Re: The doomsayers are wrong again (Score: 3, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-21 22:52 (#1TR)

Wow - what a well-reasoned, measured, and carefully contemplated opinion! You'd make a lousy tech journalist! Take that as a compliment. I agree with you - it's fun to talk about a new age of gadgets, because we're bored using and writing about the old ones. But those old gadgets worked marvelously well for some tasks the new ones are perfectly unsuited. Welcome to the new world.

I wouldn't want to do any CAD or design on my ipad, that's for damn sure. But I'm happy to have one so I don't have to boot up "the beast" every time I want to see if there's a new Pipedot post.

Re: The doomsayers are wrong again (Score: 2)

by vanderhoth@pipedot.org on 2014-05-22 10:33 (#1V4)

Wish I could assign you more than one category for moderation. It's completely true. I would have included laptops in the desktop category, although they're mobile, it's not like I can, or at least not like I would, whip out mine on the bus to check Facebook like I do with my phone. Also with a mouse and keyboard they're just as versatile as a desktop and they can be as powerful. I use mine for modeling in Blender3D.