Mmm, not so much. Apart from what you hear from tablet makers. It's stagnant, but it's not in sharp decline.
Source: 2Q13 shipments : 75,700,902 VS 2Q14 shipments : 75,763,725
Yeah, it's "common knowledge" as they say, if you don't bother checking numbers.
But now my first suggestion for them is to go for SSD, which instantly fixes their old "slow" PCs. Thus eliminating the need to buy a new PC/laptop.
For years, you had to buy at least a laptop if you wanted your mother to be able to use facebook to stay in touch with the family that maybe moved away. Even back then, for such a usecase a laptop was overkill. But it was still a sale for the vendor.
Now, phones and tablets cover these things very nicely so it is only logical that sales of laptops decline. What also helps explaining the lower sales is that quite frankly, for many many usecases where you might prefer a laptop over a tablet, a laptop from a couple of years ago is still very much sufficient to get the job done. There is simply no need to upgrade as frequently as we did in the past. Edge cases like heavy duty movie editing or rendering of course still require a more up to date machine, I imagine.
EDIT: besides, based on your link, it should be classified as Mature Phase and not Declining phase. See sales numbers.
You're upset because you see some kind of conspiracy to defame the PC or whatever, but the industry has not grown in sales while the economy has.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...
This is a chart of per PC profit. Let's break that phrase down:
"per" -- this says nothing about industry-wide profit, which you would need to address in a discussion about whether or not the industry is in decline. If I said that profit-per-telephone for rotary phones was the highest ever this year, would you be convinced that the industry is doing better than ever?
"PC" -- not just laptops. This graph goes all the way back to 2006, when laptops were hardly as ubiquitous as they are today.
I don't understand what you're trying to do here. The industry is clearly in decline by every accepted measure. Even if we go by your chart, any industry whose major players are doing worse than (or at best, about even) with their numbers from 8 years ago would be said to be declining. Not stable, which is another term with a specific meaning, and also not what you think it is.
Feel free to find data showing "clear decline". I'm saying I'm not convinced. It's about as much in decline as anything else that's needed in every life : cars, fridges, stoves... PCs are now commodities, what's the big news ? This means low profit margins, and this means low renewal cycles too except for niche uses. Yet we aren't going to see the sales drop by 50% anytime soon.
Yet we aren't going to see the sales drop by 50% anytime soon.
For example, the idea that a one-time 50% drop is the definition of a decline. In fact, just last year shipments were down 12% year over year: http://m.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324695104578414973...
That's just one article. You can try googling "laptop sales year over year" and seeing what comes back. Nobody who knows anything denies that the industry is in decline.
But then again, HN's cadre of Ron Paul voters are known to deny basic economic realities based purely on wishful thinking, so you're hardly alone.