They said so on the news today & the stock prices seem to confirm this. Is this because everyone has a computer or because no one can afford one?
I don’t think it’s the latter, aren’t they cheaper than ever before? Maybe we’re close to saturation.
IMHO it seems that most of the people who have a computer already (bought within the past year or so) are satisfied with what they have.
The people ready to purchase are most likely waiting until after the holidays, when they know the prices will drop even further.
With regard to desktop machines:
I would say that a large factor is that most people see no compelling reason to upgrade. With the current emphasis on web-based applications, there’s nothing pushing demand for more power, either in business client machines or home PC’s, apart from the game market. For the first time in quite a while, we haven’t been building a lot of PC software that demands more and more resources, and what most people want to run at home or in their small businesses will run quite adequately on a three or four year old machine. Instead, we’re pushing the bounds of the communication infrastructure, and shifting a lot of smarts to wireless devices, appliances and the like. The server market isn’t as stagnant, though it’s experiencing a slowdown. It’s a consequence of going back to “thinner” clients, and shifting applications to things other than traditional computing devices.
Ah, plus the corporate market for computers also is getting stagnant. With the market dropping it should be interesting what happens in the next couple of months.
Things seem to be reaching way beyond what we need. Few people need 20 gigs of HD space or 128 megs ram.
I look forward to having a wireless internet connection. That may come some day. No more wired modems.
Exactly. The industry needs a new “killer app” that people want and requires oodles of CPU power, speed, memory, and disk space. Something like Photoshop.
Lately, the killer apps seem to be in handheld-type things, with portable mp3 players, PDAs, WAP-phones, etc. No need for a Pentium IX-esque system in your living room for that, eh?