[fellix]

Doom and gloom stories for the PC platform were persistent as far, as I can remember myself being interested in the industry (early 90's that is). I can't remember how many times the "elite" RISC/UNIX combo was just about to crush WinTel and drive the x86 architecture into oblivion -- a long running narrative throughout the 90's.

[Malo]

Except this time there is widespread adoption of viable alternatives to budget PCs, ala tablets.

[pcchen]

Originally Posted by fellix

Doom and gloom stories for the PC platform were persistent as far, as I can remember myself being interested in the industry (early 90's that is). I can't remember how many times the "elite" RISC/UNIX combo was just about to crush WinTel and drive the x86 architecture into oblivion -- a long running narrative throughout the 90's.

What's interesting is, in the history of computing, it's almost always something "coming from below." Mini-computers replaced mainframes (although not totally), and workstations replaced mini-computers, and PC replaced workstations. Very rarely something was "coming from above," actually I can't think of an example right now.

It's predicted, years ago, that ARM based computers could "come from below" to replace current PC. Just like mainframe still exists right now, PC and PC based workstations, PC based servers, are probably going to be exist for quite some time, but I won't rule out the possibility that ARM based mobile devices could "come from below" to replace a large portion of PC's current market share.

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by Malo

Except this time there is widespread adoption of viable alternatives to budget PCs, ala tablets.

That's true for the RISC/Unix/Linux/etc. rants from the minority of users.

But not true for the notebook/laptop "revolution" that happened in the late 90's early 2000's as notebooks and laptops became affordable (1000 USD and less). At that time you saw the same predictions as we're now having with tablets due to notebooks and laptops taking away significant market share from desktops.

And while desktops saw a brief drop in sales (around the release of WinXP we saw an almost exact same dip in desktop sales as we're seeing in PC sales currently), market share eventually stabilized and desktop sales went on the rise again.

I'm expecting something similar here as tablets become more ubiquitous and the novelty wears off (wanting to upgrade every year). Just as it did with notebooks where people felt they had to upgrade their notebook every 1-2 years. And where after X amount of years everyone that was going to replace their desktop had already replaced their desktop. And then some of which started buying desktops again.

The only thing I can see changing this dynamic is if tablets became true computing devices with a full blown OS. Either Microsoft with Win8 or Apple with MacOS. Something capable of running everything (productivity and entertainment) that can be run on a desktop. But for that to happen we also need the hardware for tablets to increase significantly in power, although Intel is quite close already. As someone on this forum has mentioned (sorry I can't remember your name) in a thread somewhere, Clovertrail based tablets can already handle all of his productivity software smoothly with the exception of large Excel spreadsheets (lots of data, not screen size. ). If Intel can get i7 or even i5 based performance into something in the 8-10 hour battery range at bit of a weight reduction, then I think we might be there.

Then again, does that change anything since it's still basically a PC even if it's a tablet?

Regards,
SB

[jimbo75]

The problem they (x86) have is that their low end desktops still make up the vast majority of their sales. If this is what is being eaten by tablets then they still have to find something to use those low end chips on. Many of them are of course the worst chips of the wafer - the Celerons and Pentiums at 65W etc.

If you basically just say that market is disappearing, then what is going to happen? Is the whole market going to shift up in price so that Celerons are priced at i3 prices? Or are they just going to throw these lower end cpu's away? There has to be a knock-on effect somewhere.

AMD is in deep trouble under these circumstances because they just don't have the performance chips that are going to be left, and they are obligated to pay $1 billion per year to GF for wafers. Kaveri better be something special or they better have a really good plan B.

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by jimbo75

The problem they (x86) have is that their low end desktops still make up the vast majority of their sales. If this is what is being eaten by tablets then they still have to find something to use those low end chips on. Many of them are of course the worst chips of the wafer - the Celerons and Pentiums at 65W etc.

If you basically just say that market is disappearing, then what is going to happen? Is the whole market going to shift up in price so that Celerons are priced at i3 prices? Or are they just going to throw these lower end cpu's away? There has to be a knock-on effect somewhere.

AMD is in deep trouble under these circumstances because they just don't have the performance chips that are going to be left, and they are obligated to pay $1 billion per year to GF for wafers. Kaveri better be something special or they better have a really good plan B.

I wouldn't say it's disappearing, it's transitioning.

Right now, Intel has only a lukewarm response to Arm in tablets with Clovertrail. It's compute capabilities are competitive but it's graphics capabilities are horrible.

If Intel can successfully transition into tablet devices, then that replaces the low end PC netbook/notebook market that is shrinking. And likely regains share that it lost to tablet devices.

And at that point, if we assume that the majority of those devices run some version of Windows rather than Android, then it's basically still PC marketshare albeit in a tablet form.

AMD has the same opportunity there. I'm sure they'll be targeting the tablet landscape as well with their APUs using the Jaguar cores.

And to take that a little further. Is there really a need for a low end desktop PC if an x86 tablet can serve the exact same functionality when hooked up to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse? Granted for extensive storage, you'd have to hook it up to an external USB drive.

Sure, currently Windows tablets are a heck of a lot more than a low end desktop PC, but will that remain true if the volume of Windows tablets were to rise dramatically? Look at netbooks. The prices on those dropped quite significantly when their popularity took off and volumes increased.

Regards,
SB

[A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y]

http://jonpeddie.com/publications/market_watch

AMD lost 0.3%, quarter-to-quarter, Intel slipped 5.3%, and Nvidia increased by 3.6%.

...

AMD’s quarter-to-quarter total shipments of desktop heterogeneous GPU/CPUs, i.e., APUs jumped 30% from Q4 and declined 7.3% in notebooks. The company’s overall PC graphics shipments slipped 0.3%.

...

Nvidia’s quarter-to-quarter desktop discrete shipments were flat from last quarter; and, the company’s mobile discrete shipments increased 7.6%. The company’s overall PC graphics shipments increase 3.6%.

[jimbo75]

Peddie's numbers are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard tbh. Most of the companies use Mercury research I believe.

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by jimbo75

Peddie's numbers are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard tbh. Most of the companies use Mercury research I believe.

There are especially useless if they don't support a preconceived opinion.

[entity279]

Originally Posted by jimbo75

Peddie's numbers are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard tbh. Most of the companies use Mercury research I believe.

Well that's a useful post

[jimbo75]

All I'm saying is that in general Mercury's figures are trusted more and by more companies. For good reason.

[entity279]

Do you have proof?

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by entity279

Do you have proof?

That's a rhetorical question, right?

I don't know anybody who pays the big bucks for market reports for either company and I'm pretty sure our jimbo doesn't either. So whatever 'source' he has is probably of similar quality as sources about, let's say, silicon yield.

But that doesn't matter anyway. It's more useful to put Peddie and Mercury reports next to each other and see if their results correlate over time. That's an exercise I leave to jimbo. For me, the fact that this outfit has put out this report for many many years is sufficient proof that enough people are willing pay for it.

(Let's also not forget that the public Peddie numbers don't differentiate between integrated and desktop.)

[jimbo75]

I know that AMD has used Mercury reports for the purposes of their slides.



I know that Nvidia prefers Mercury's methods as well, or has done in the past - Nvidia declares JPR report 'an irrelevant metric'

I know that people on financial boards tend to use Mercury over Peddie - http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd....g&mid=12790483

Can you find me any evidence of the reverse, ie AMD or Nvidia using Peddie's figures for anything?

Let's not forget Peddie's brilliant benchmarking either! - Why not make it fun by changing names and colours half way through? http://jonpeddie.com/reviews/comment...-480-fermi-aib

[Blazkowicz]

Originally Posted by jimbo75

The problem they (x86) have is that their low end desktops still make up the vast majority of their sales. If this is what is being eaten by tablets then they still have to find something to use those low end chips on. Many of them are of course the worst chips of the wafer - the Celerons and Pentiums at 65W etc.

If you basically just say that market is disappearing, then what is going to happen? Is the whole market going to shift up in price so that Celerons are priced at i3 prices? Or are they just going to throw these lower end cpu's away? There has to be a knock-on effect somewhere.

Intel has been selling such bottom of the barrel chips at low power, already - at 17 watts, with the sandy bridge Celeron 847, 867 etc. in the low 1.x GHz clock range. It's not suitable for a tablet but you can see it in nettops, netbooks (the cheap Acer Chromebook), ITX.

Eventually they'll sell 10 watt Ivy Bridge crap, then Haswell and Broadwell crap. Calling it "crap" is all relative, if you gave me a laptop or netbook with a Celeron 857 or similar I'd be pretty happy with it.
But with next-gen Atoms these low end chips might be less needed.

[A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

(Let's also not forget that the public Peddie numbers don't differentiate between integrated and desktop.)

I find the numbers for 2013Q1 interesting in that Nvidia's market share (discrete only) at 18% nearly equals AMD's market share of 20.2% which include APU's, Chipsets (with GPUs in them) and discrete.

AMD lost 5 percentage points over the last year from 25.2% down to 20.2% while Nvidia gained nearly 3 percentage points from 15.1% to 18%.

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by jimbo75

...

The public Peddie numbers make it hard to make direct conclusions about individual market segments. That's what Nvidia was complaining about in that link of yours. I assume the juicy numbers are in their for-pay report.

As for quality of data: these kind of reports have numbers from the field, which happens to be quite a bit easier to get right than forward looking speculations. All you need are the right connections with manufacturers, distributors, etc and do a lot of leg work to gather all the information. You'd need to be extraordinary incompetent get this kind of stuff wrong, especially if you've been doing it for 10+ years and people have been willing to pay for it.

A slide from 2008, an article that confirms that the Mercury and Peddie numbers point to the same conclusion, and a post with copyrighted data from a $x000 report on an amateur stock chatroom. That's all you were able to come up with?

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y

I find the numbers for 2013Q1 interesting in that Nvidia's market share (discrete only) at 18% nearly equals AMD's market share of 20.2% which include APU's, Chipsets (with GPUs in them) and discrete.

AMD lost 5 percentage points over the last year from 25.2% down to 20.2% while Nvidia gained nearly 3 percentage points from 15.1% to 18%.

Yes. The Peddie numbers are especially worrisome wrt the position of AMD vs Intel. It doesn't seem as if their APU strategy is working very well.