PC sales are in free fall and could decline nearly 10% in 2013 by some estimates. Consumers are increasingly turning to tablets, which are expected to grow by 59% this year to reach shipments of 182.5 million units. Research firm Canalys has found that demand for desktop PCs fell by 10.3% in the first quarter of 2013 and demand for notebooks declined 13.1%. The tablet market more than doubled, however, with shipments growing 106.1% to reach 41.9 million units. The firm predicts that the PC market, when accounting for desktops, notebooks and tablets, will see shipments of 493.1 million units in 2013, up 7% year-over-year. Tablets are estimated to account for 37% of the market, an increase from 25% in 2012. The firm notes that tablet shipments are on pace to surpass notebooks in the final quarter of the year. Canalys’ press release follows below. More →
Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, on Monday took the wraps off of the company’s new MacBook Air computers at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models have been upgraded with Intel’s new Haswell processor, improved battery life and 802.11ac Wi-Fi connectivity. The 11-inch model will now deliver 9 hours of battery life, while the 13-inch model will last a whopping 12 hours. The 11-inch model will start at $999 with 128GB of internal storage and the 13-inch will start at $1,099. The new MacBook Air will ship out to consumers today. Apple also announced a completely redesigned Mac Pro computer that will be built in the United States. The desktop is 1/8th the size of previous models and is equipped with a next-generation Intel Xeon processor. The computer also supports 20Gbps Thunderbolt 2 ports, gigabit ethernet, HDMI Out, USB 3.0, dual graphics and 4K resolution displays. The new Mac Pro will be available this fall.
While this year’s WWDC may not be as exciting as those in years past, it should still deliver a much-anticipated refresh of Apple’s MacBook Air lineup. According to 9to5Mac, Apple will launch new versions of the Air at WWDC next week that will likely ”carry the faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi chips” that are capable of delivering gigabit Wi-Fi connectivity. Other reports have indicated that the new MacBook Air will feature a front-facing 1080p video camera and a dual-microphone system. 9to5Mac’s sources also say that “Apple could drop the price slightly of the high-end MacBook Air in some countries,” although it’s unclear if that price cut would apply to customers in the United States.
Microsoft on Wednesday posted a video walk-through of its new Windows 8.1 operating system highlighting improvements to the Start screen, search function and more. Microsoft’s new lock screen will no longer display a single static image, but will instead scroll through a collage of photos generated from a user’s PC, SkyDrive account and Windows Phone. The company has added two different Live Tile sizes to Start screen, and Windows 8.1 will deliver more personalization options with more background colors and new animated wallpapers that move as you scroll through the Start screen, called “motion accents.” More →
We saw plenty of promise in Windows 8 when we first previewed it back in 2012, but consumers and businesses weren’t blown away and PC sales began suffering as a result. Now that Windows 8 is seven months old, has anything changed? According to new market share data from Net Applications, which determines software market share by monitoring traffic across 40,000 difference websites, Windows 8′s share of the PC market grew to 4.27% in May from 3.82% in April. While things are certainly moving in the right direction, Windows 7′s share grew in May as well, from 44.72% in April to 44.85% last month. Worst of all, Vista’s market share of 4.51% is still greater than Windows 8′s share seven months after the new OS debuted. More →
Acer doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind about Microsoft and its new platforms. Top executives from the company have called Windows 8 a flop and bashed Microsoft for its Surface tablet, but at the same time Acer’s president Jim Wong has also defended the operating system. Microsoft is doubling down on its Windows RT platform and is looking to its manufacturing partners to help spur consumer interest with new and affordable devices to compete with low-cost Android tablets. Acer may not be one the companies willing to help Microsoft, however. Acer chairman J.T. Wang said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that Windows RT won’t be “so influential anymore,” and the company is unsure if it will release a new RT tablet. More →
Intel’s next-generation processors have been built from the ground up to deliver both improved performance and battery life. Intel’s Haswell platform is based on the 22 nanometer architecture and is designed to double or even triple graphics performance with its integrated GPU. The chip consumes less power than Ivy Bridge processors and is said to improve battery life by up to 50% with no loss of performance, which roughly translates to 9.1 hours of HD video playback. The company claims Haswell will deliver the “biggest battery life increase in Intel history.” Engadget reports that quad-core Haswell desktop processors will be available beginning this Tuesday starting at $192 for the i5-4570 and up to $339 for the high-end Core i7-4770K.
Apple is sure to announce a variety of new products at its Worldwide Developers Conference next week and a recent leak from 9to5Mac confirms that the company will refresh at least one of its MacBook lines at the annual event. The website obtained SKU information for an unreleased MacBook model and speculates that both the MacBook Pro with a Retina display and MacBook Air may see updates. The latest rumors point to a slimmer 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro with a full HD iSight camera and Intel’s new Haswell processor. The MacBook Air is expected to see similar updates to its internal hardware, along with a better front-facing camera and an improved microphone system. Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is scheduled to take place on June 10th in San Francisco.
Apple is expected to debut a number of updated Mac computers during its annual WWDC show this year, and a new report suggests a redesigned Retina MacBook Pro will be among them. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a good track record when reporting details surrounding unannounced Apple devices, believes Apple has a number of important tweaks in store for its laptop lineup at WWDC. In a research note picked up by 9to5Mac, Kuo writes that Apple will unveil a slimmer 13-inch Retina-equipped MacBook Pro with a full HD iSight camera and Intel’s new Haswell processor, which is said to increase laptop battery life by up to 50%. Kuo also thinks Apple’s MacBook Air lineup will receive similar upgrades — minus the Retina display, of course — but despite the updates, he sees Apple’s laptop sales falling to 12 million units in 2013 from 13.6 million in 2012.
Google is always looking to push technology forward and in its latest effort has donated €1.5 million, roughly $1.95 million, to Trinity College in Dublin. The money will help fund a new project that looks to transform computer science education in Irish schools over the next 10 years, Silicon Republic reported. The project will send 1,000 teachers back to school for a course in modern computer science that is aimed at improving teaching skills. Google’s donation will also help increase teaching for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in disadvantaged schools in an effort to revamp educational and social change throughout Ireland. To further enhance the project, the Raspberry Pi Foundation will be providing more than 1,000 Raspberry Pi computers to participating students and teachers to make their coding journey even easier.
The PC market is in rough shape and new projections from IDC show that we’re probably not even close to hitting bottom yet. According to IDC’s latest numbers, PC shipments will decline by 7.8% in 2013 and will continue to fall by another 1.2% in 2014. The firm sees a slower decline in 2014 mostly because companies that still use Windows XP will likely upgrade to Windows 8 machines once Microsoft stops supporting the older operating system next year. The continued fall of the PC market is still being driven by the rise of tablets as portable computing devices that can serve users’ web browsing needs at a much lower cost than traditional PCs.
The PC industry is expected to see negative growth for the second consecutive year as consumers continue to favor tablets over notebooks. Research firm IDC forecasts that worldwide tablet shipments will surpass notebooks in 2013, and will grow to top all PC shipments by 2015. Tablet shipments are expected to grow 58.7% year-over-year to 229.3 million units, up from 144.5 million in 2012, and the average price of tablets is estimated to decline -10.8% to $381 due to the rise of low-cost Android models. By comparison, the average price of a PC has nearly doubled in 2013 to $635. More →
