Sunday, January 15, 2023

With PC Sales Down, Laptop Makers Turn To Services

With PC Sales Down, Laptop Makers Turn To Services
  • Gadgets /
  • Technology /
  • Ex

As PC sales declined, laptop makers turned to services

As PC sales declined, laptop makers turned to services

/

In a world where many people already own laptops, how do you get them to buy more?

MonicaChin /@ mcquared96:

Share this story

Las Vegas is home to the annual CES trade show
AMD CEO Lisa Su announced the new Ryzen 7040 chip at CES 2023.
Photo: David Baker/Getty Images

The PC market is struggling, and has been for most of the past year. According to Canalys' latest analysis, global PC shipments will decline 16% in 2022, while Gartner reported a 28.5% year-over-year decline in the fourth quarter, the biggest quarterly drop in shipments since as Gartner began tracking the PC market. All PC manufacturers except Apple experienced year-over-year declines. Laptop sales are said to have suffered the most.

All of this creates a somewhat uncertain backdrop ahead of CES 2023, the annual conference where tech companies show off the products they will launch in 2023. During the show, executives and representatives from various PC manufacturers acknowledged that the industry has faced big challenges this year. Keep the laptop interesting.

Some companies try to do this with ridiculous hardware (like Lenovo's Yoga Book 9i with a dual screen, two OLEDs and a touchpad). But others are moving away from the hardware and the power that hardware can provide and focusing on the more unusual capabilities of this year's software.

Las Vegas is home to the annual CES trade show
This is the Ryzen 7040 series of chips that was released in Las Vegas in January of this year.
Photo: David Baker/Getty Images

Laptops have gotten to the point where they can do what people want, and above a certain price point, they're durable enough to last. Next-generation chips are often not enough to justify buying a new car for most consumers. For people shopping for something new this year, luxury features are probably the most important.

That's certainly the opinion of Jason Banta, AMD's corporate vice president and general manager of OEM customers. Banta's theory in an interview with The Verge is that the Covid-19 pandemic and the boom in telecommuting it has caused has led many consumers to buy computers that are better than before. Now the question in their mind is, "Is there something new that I should do or something new that I can do?" "We know a lot of people are buying computers in 2020 and 2021," Banta said. And now that they realize how important it is to them, what's the next thing that will bring them back to a new computer?

For chipmakers, a partial answer to this question is artificial intelligence and the use cases it enables or may enable in the future.

While Intel and AMD both announced very powerful laptop chips this year, both were accompanied by equally bright AI announcements. AMD has revealed that some of its new chips will include the first Ryzen AI engine built on the XDNA architecture; Intel's upcoming Meteor Lake chip will also have artificial intelligence capabilities. AMD was so excited about this aspect of the CES keynote that it brought Microsoft's Panos Panu on stage to say that "AI is going to reinvent the way you do things in Windows."

There are not many applications for this AI engine. But the most immediate function is the webcam. Bright objects for things like eye tracking, background blur, auto framing, conferencing, and other apps that adapt to your behavior.

"What worries me in the AI ​​space is the experiences or use cases that haven't been created yet," Banta said. “It's like a console. The new console is great, but it's the next game that really relies on the experience."

"About artificial intelligence, it's not something we want people to see immediately and then make a decision," he added. “That's what we want people to continue to see. Think of it as a catalyst for many exciting things happening in the market.

HP Dragonfly Pro Keyboard Hotkeys.
HP's upcoming Dragonfly Pro has a dedicated button that displays a virtual concierge service.
Photo: Monica Chin/The Verge

Likewise, many OEMs seem to have dropped the accelerator when it comes to standalone CES laptops, which support things like features , solutions , and ecosystems.

HP is a prime example. Alex Cho, HP's president of personal systems, told me in an interview that the company is undergoing a "transformation," hoping to be seen as a "solutions" company rather than a PC company this year. "We're not just going to sell computers," Cho said. "It's not about computers, it's about informatics.

HP laptop announcements are pretty rare this CES. The company has updated several of its gaming devices. The biggest announcements are the cloud gaming ecosystem and new Omen Gaming Hub features, including integration with Nvidia's GeForce Now. These Gaming Hub components, desktops and accessories were mentioned during the discussion. "Our goal is not to be a provider of gaming computers. We should be a provider of gaming solutions," Cho said.

The business side has brought webcams to the fore with a new "multi-camera experience" that lets video callers automatically switch between cameras and keystone correction (which automatically flattens and crops the camera stream to help share documents and whiteboards during calls) and others . . Other features related to HP presence detection software. Other posts cover new remote services and IT information. Also on display was the Dragonfly Pro, a consumer Windows PC whose integration with HP's new Live Concierge service was a highlight.

Will all these features help HP get out of the bear market? Well, at least they're sure. "You shouldn't follow us based on PC market performance," he said. "Like a game? Like a hybrid workspace?"

And HP is not alone in this belief. Several other manufacturers with a strong presence at CES this year highlighted great software features that use camera tracking and artificial intelligence, from glasses-free 3D displays from Asus and Acer to Razer soundbars. Around your head to optimize the music. The aforementioned dual-screen Lenovo Yoga Book is also very much a software offering; The form factor isn't new (RIP Surface Neo), but Lenovo's investment in an impressive gesture control system makes it a solid product.

This type of twist is something we're seeing in the TV space as well. As display technology has stagnated, almost all manufacturers are turning to artificial intelligence techniques to attract more customers. It will be interesting to see if that strategy works for this year's PCs, since we're talking about some of the companies best known for software (hello Lenovo), crash management software (hello Razer). , and a maze of customer service (hello, HP). Additional automated software can sometimes be a burden rather than a help when it disrupts existing processes. (This is why I often turn off the preloaded AI.)

Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 lid closed on blue desktop view.
The ROG Zephyrus G14, which previously offered an AMD GPU, returned to Nvidia this year.
Photo: Amelia Golavaty Krales/The Verge

Indeed, the boom cycle of the pandemic-era laptop market is unlikely to last forever. It's true that companies that make consumer Windows laptops have to compete with Apple's modern MacBooks that eat their lunch. It's also true that fancy video conferencing features (and AI-heavy applications promised by AMD and Intel) haven't been as relevant to much of the PC market as key metrics like performance, battery life, and price.

To sell a product, no matter what area you're in, you have to convince a lot of customers that they need something that they don't have. More than half of American employees still have the option of working from home at least one day a week, and companies still seem to understand the need to create an ecosystem. 2023 could be the year that shows how much automation is considered a luxury and how much consumers need it.