IDC's data shows record-breaking 10.6 per cent drop, with Apple the only top five manufacturer making significant gains

Global PC shipments dropped again in Q4 2015, and by the biggest margin since market research firm IDC started tracking the data more than 20 years ago.

PC shipments reached 71.9 million units in Q4 of calendar 2015, according to IDC, a record year-on-year drop of 10.6 per cent. Prior to this, the biggest quarterly drop was 9.8 per cent, recorded in 2013. This year was also the first since 2008 in which total shipments came in below 300 million units.

More at the link :

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...ine-in-q4-2015

Apple is the only one showing growth with macs lol.

Smartphones and tablets strike again. This bit is interesting :

IDC noted that sales of "detachable tablets" are recorded separately, despite the category having more in common with traditional PCs than a standard tablet. Had those sales been added to IDC's Q4 numbers, the decline would have narrowed to 5 per cent.

 

From gaf:http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1170002

Nothing surprising or to worry about when it comes to PC gaming, because those OEM PCs are focused more for work/business than gaming.

Because why upg now?
Why not wait until ram have Hybrid memory cube technology? or atleast DDR4?
Why not wait until gpus are 16nms with finFETs (instead of current 28nm)?
Why buy a new monitor when you know freesync screens are soon here & common place?

Its just a bad time to upg, once that changes people will again upg.

Yeah pc gaming is fine.  It's just regular PC's that are in decline.  Smartphones and tablets are giving new families and house holds less and less reason to buy a pc. 

Also these are pre-built models which aren't the main focus when it comes to PC gaming.

Also don't get the reason to involve tablets or phones in this is a focus on pre-built PC shipments to work places and regular casual non PC people, the kind I work with on a daily basis.

Not that surprised really

BTW, in other interesting news:

Only about 14% of all computer devices sold these days are actually using a Windows operating system.

It's fair to bring them to the discussion because some people that years ago would have bought a Dell or HP pre-build computer for their home to check their email and browse the internet, nowadays are more likely to buy a cheap tablet to do that.

I feel bad for Windows.

I think a big part of the problem is that Intel is complacent.

An I2600K OC is still viable for everything 4+ years later. What is the reason to upgrade? The performance increase is just not worth the extremely minor upgrade. If computers bought 2 years ago, aren't much faster than a new computer than what incentive do customers have to upgrade?