Edit |Yuer Lake
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In recent years, with the outbreak of the epidemic and the deterioration of the global economic environment, the overall performance of the consumer electronics market has been sluggish. This is undoubtedly worse for the PC track, which has been stagnant for many years. "Sailing against the current, if you don't advance, you will retreat" may be the true portrayal of the computer market in the past decade.
According to Canalys data, the global PC market shipped 65.6 million units in the first three quarters of 2023, a year-on-year decrease of 7%. Although the market is still in the cold winter, it has rebounded by 8% compared with the second quarter, and the decline has narrowed, and the PC industry is gradually showing signs of recovery.
It is worth noting that Lenovo recently released the world's first AI PC, marking that the computer industry is about to usher in the AI era. According to Canalys**, with the blessing of AI, global PC shipments will increase by 8% in 2024, returning to the level of 2019, and the PC track, which has been silent for many years, may usher in spring.
As the protagonist of the industry, the notebook will undoubtedly usher in new changes, and the market prospect is bright. But desktops that have been reduced to supporting roles may still not be favored by the industry. In the coming 2024, how many people will pay for desktop computers?The answer may not be promising, but the evolution of desktops never stops.
A desktop computer abandoned by the times
It is said that the vicissitudes of life, we are fortunate to experience this change in the computer industry. In the past 20 years, with the continuous innovation of semiconductor technology, computers have changed from precious and rare items to ordinary electronic products at your fingertips. The mainstream position in the desktop industry has also been replaced by laptops.
According to the data, in 2002, the domestic desktop computer sales volume was 97560,000 units, while laptop sales were only 8870,000 units. At that time, the desktop situation was still very good, and the computer cities across the country were bustling and hot, and both the brand and the assembly stores were making a lot of money.
However, since 2009, when domestic notebook sales surpassed desktops for the first time, the PC market pattern has changed greatly. Hardware manufacturers such as motherboards and graphics cards began to make big waves, brands such as Founder, Unisplendour, 7UP and TCL began to fade out of the public eye, and desktops began to lose their market dominance.
Looking back at the current statistics, it is completely feng shui in turn. In the first half of 2023, China's desktop shipments will only be 3 million units, while notebook shipments will be as high as 6.6 million units. Specifically, in the market, brand manufacturers no longer release new desktop products, and the computer city slowly disappears.
Why the desktop opportunity has become the background board of the industry is inevitable and accidental.
First of all, the gap between laptops and desktops in terms of performance has become smaller and smaller, which is enough to meet the work needs of most people. For example, in 2021, after Intel adopted a hybrid architecture for 12th generation Core processors, the single-core score of mobile processors has been basically the same as that of desktop CPUsThe RTX 4060 released by NVIDIA this year has the same core architecture for mobile and desktop graphics cards.
Secondly, the biggest factor influencing consumer purchases, in addition to performance, is **. In recent years, with the popularity of virtual currency, since 2017, the price of core hardware such as graphics cards, memory and CPUs has begun to rise, especially graphics cards** have nearly doubled. This has led to consumers being reluctant to spend more money to toss and turn around to laptops.
In addition to the above reasons, the emergence of smartphones and tablets, as well as the popularization of 5G and WiFi technology, have enabled people to use the Internet for entertainment anytime and anywhere, greatly weakening the use of desktops. Sales continue to be the best, so that the hardware manufacturers that are blooming collectively dumb fire, and brand manufacturers have given up the desktop market because they are unprofitable.
For example, since 2013, Apple's desktop computer product line has not been updated for a long time, and in 2021, Apple's iMac Pro desktop computer was officially discontinued. Now when it comes to Apple, many people may first think of mobile phones, but Apple started with iMac desktop computers.
It is said that the PC industry has become a sunset, so the desktop is undoubtedly sentenced to death. Most people think it's only a matter of time before desktops die. But the reality is that desktops are still stubbornly alive in areas that are invisible to the masses.
It will not die, but it will be polarized
In fact, as early as more than ten years ago, the industry has been singing about the decline of desktops, and even when the all-in-one machine appeared, it was concluded that desktops would be eliminated in the future. However, as an all-in-one computer as a transition between desktop and notebook, it has not yet developed, and although the desktop market is sluggish, it is old and strong.
Throughout the history of PC development, it is actually very similar to the car track. In the early days, the automobile industry was dominated by trucks, and later gradually divided into pickup trucks, sedans, SUVs and other tracks. Nowadays, the family sedan has become the mainstream of the automobile track, but it does not mean that there is no market for trucks. The same is true for the PC industry.
After decades of development, desktops are also quietly changing under the consumption upgrade. Desktops will not die out anytime soon, but the direction of development is more professional and segmented.
At present, although the performance of notebooks has been greatly improved, the advantages of desktops are clear at a glance in consumer fields such as large-scale games, ** editing, and 3D designIn the low-end market, notebooks have limited space to dive in, and the cost performance is not as good as assembling computers.
Therefore, this leads to the two major directions of desktop computers in the consumer market: one is a professional PC of about 10,000 yuan, and the other is an entry-level office computer below 3,000 yuan. And this ** range happens to be the main battlefield of notebooks, and desktops are in the comfort zone in these two price segments, and the market space is guaranteed.
For example, in recent years, Lenovo's Rescuer Blade, Asus's ROG, and HP's Shadow Elf series game consoles are priced at more than 7,000 yuan, and the sales are very impressive. The most successful direction of low-end desktop is mini hosts.
Mini consoles are not new, as early as 2005, Apple launched the Mac mini, which was well received by consumers. The mini host can be simply understood as a deformation of the desktop, which not only has the scalability of the desktop, but also takes into account the portability of the notebook.
In today's consumption upgrade, the mini host market focusing on light office has long been quite large-scale. For example, Lenovo, Xiaomi and other major manufacturers have released mini host products, and there are countless brands focusing on mini hosts such as Zero Moment, Mingfan, and Geek.
The explosion of mini hosts is also considered by the industry to be the second spring that may drive the development of desktops. There is still room for development of desktops, but new machines are bursting out in areas that the public can't see, such as the B-end market.
At present, enterprise office and procurement are still based on desktops, and notebooks are difficult to become the primary choice in the commercial track. Especially under the weak consumer market, PC manufacturers are turning to the B-end market to seek breakthroughs. The popularity of desktops on the B-side has never subsided.
For example, in recent years, Lenovo, Huawei, Inspur and other companies have been deploying commercial PCs and released a variety of desktop models to meet the needs of different enterprises, which has also laid a good foundation for the development of desktops. However, if you want to bring desktops back to the public eye in the consumer market, you may have to rely on AI PCs.
It will take time for AI to help
The hottest track in the world in 2022 is undoubtedly AIGC, from the open source release of the AI painting model Stable Diffusion in the first half of the year to the emergence of the dialogue language model ChatGPT in the second half of the year, all of which indicate that the era of AI large models has arrived. In China, there has been a "100-model war", and Internet technology companies such as Tencent, Huawei, and iFLYTEK have begun to deploy in the field of AI.
Large models seem to have begun to penetrate all walks of life, and it is an industry trend for Internet manufacturers to collectively pour into the AI large model track, and it is also to prepare for the arrival of AI PCs.
In October this year, Intel announced the launch of the AI PC acceleration program, the first AI PC processor codenamed Meteor Lake, which integrates a neural network processorAMD also officially announced the Ryzen 8000 APU codenamed Hawk Point for AI PCs at the Advancing AI conference on December 7.
At the same time, this year, Microsoft will officially integrate its AI assistant Copilot into the Win11 system, and will launch the Win12 system with the main AI selling point in June next year. If you want to experience the AI system, the hardware performance must reach or exceed 40 tops, which means that the PC industry will usher in a wave of replacement.
This is great news for desktops, as desktops have a natural advantage over laptops in terms of performance. But it's a pity that both chip giants and PC factories have invariably positioned AI PCs as mobile notebook products.
For example, Lenovo, Asus and other manufacturers have begun to sell AI PC notebook products based on the new generation of Meteor Lake architecture. Although Intel released the 14th generation Core desktop chip this year, the 13th generation Raptor Lake core that still continues is not an AI PC chip in the strict sense. At the same time, it is still inconclusive whether Meteor Lake will have a desktop version, and the hope of Intel's desktop AI chip is still pinned on the next generation of Arrow Lake.
In terms of AI, notebooks run ahead of desktops, in addition to notebooks are the mainstream of consumption, the higher level of integration is also suitable for the construction and product debugging of the AI ecosystem. While desktops have the advantage of being modules, hardware compatibility issues can lead to a poor AI application experience.
From this point of view, the market explosion of AI desktops will come later. But another question worth pondering is, when will the desktop market grow next after the AI boom is popularized?There may not even be an accurate answer for hardware and brand manufacturers.
Behind the wordlessness, in fact, is the ultimate problem of the desktop: the direction of development. There is no development direction, no matter how good the performance of the desktop is, no matter how small the size is, it can only be forgotten. Of course, there are still many manufacturers who are making efforts to explore more application scenarios for desktops.
For example, Lenovo, Xiaomi and other manufacturers have tried the home Internet of Things, turning the desktop into a home intelligent control center;Apple uses Mac Mini to form a small server to provide users with more ways to play;Intel business PCs began to streamline components, remove redundant designs, and promote 7L green PCs. Desktops are looking for value directions on the subdivision track, and of course, the emergence of AI will also add wings to the evolution of desktops.
Conclusion
Times are advancing, and desktops, although forgotten by the masses, are always evolving. In the future, with the continuous improvement of semiconductor manufacturing processes and the improvement of virtual reality technologies such as VR and AR, the boundary between desktops and notebooks will become more and more blurred. As a form of the computer, the desktop will also die out.
Nowadays, if desktops want to develop further, they cannot do without the support of hardware, software and ecology. Under the consumption upgrade, the concept of consumption has also changed from the previous blind purchase to on-demand procurement, and the subdivision of the track also gives the desktop more room for development, at least the current desktop is still far away from the sunset.