PC sales decline has very little to do with people moving to other platforms or form factors and is more a result of PC's now being powerful enough that the lifecycle is much much longer. 10 years ago people were upgrading every 1-2 years, before that it was sometimes every 9-12 months just to try and keep up. Nowadays a 5 year old PC is good enough for just about everything and even for gaming you can survive on an old rig or spend a little just to upgrade the graphics. This makes annual sales decrease significantly but doesn't really reduce user base.

It was only an example. I know most people who have PC's don't even play games(maybe simple ones only).

Oh...So how do computer companies such as HP still manage to do well? 

They Don't, HP have been struggling for quite a number of years now, though their bread and butter is corporate/enterprise market.

Do you think things will continue to be bad for them, or will they find some breathing space?

Your premise is not very thought through is it?

A several years ago Intel made the mistake of releasing kickass CPUs. Since then people didn't need new PCs because it wouldn't be a noticeable upgrade. Hence while the OEM PC market is shrinking ever since. However the GPU and PC software market is as strong as ever. The people who switched over to mobile weren't the ones spending a lot of money on PCs anyway. Or in short, currently the PC industry does not need saving.

While having a completely new architecture with easy swappable parts would be great, it's not really needed right now.

I wouldn't be surprised if HP ended up doing an IBM and selling off the desktop division to a chinese integrator. Boxed PC market is a cuttthroat business with razor thin margins that has been the death of many a large seller over the years. The fact that people simply don't need to upgrade as often anymore makes it even worse as there is so little profit per customer per anum and this is not likely to change anytime soon.

My bad, also I misread it a bit. Thought you were saying Upgradable PCs  sounded far fetched instead of the industry being in trouble.

In response to that I think its the natural way of things. Desktops lost market to laptops and the same will happen with will all dedicated  PCs against tablets and phones. As more and more things become internet based I don't see power being a key issue. The PC gaming market is a fraction of the PC market in general, what you suggested could help out with  that niche but overall I don't see it happening. 

Doesn't intel provide components for mobiles? I would've thought they benefit from all the phones+tablets.

Zen will come and save us! After all, all AMD fans will finally be able to upgrade to a decent CPU :)


Also, I've spent so much cash on my rig this year, it's not even funny. I have no idea how PC market can be dying, if a tiny CPU alone costs as much as a full console. GPU's cost an arm and a leg as well.

pretty much this. companies usually had a 3 year replacement cycle.  my company last year changed the IT policy from 3 years to now be run till fail.