Vendor, Distributor Execs: PC Still Alive And Kicking

Hold off on sounding the death knell for PCs, vendor and distributor executives urged attendees at the 2014 Synnex North American Conference in Greenville, S.C.

Despite being decades old, the personal computer is still sought after by consumers and businesses alike due to end of service for Windows XP and significant market innovation over the past 18 months.

Intel has enjoyed three consecutive quarters of PC sales growth thanks to significant positive trends in the enterprise, according to C.J. Bruno, vice president and general manager of Intel Americas.

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"For the first time in a couple of years, I can stand before you with good news about the PC," Bruno told the crowd of roughly 1,800.

And even consumer consumption of PCs is expected to turn the corner and start rising by the end of 2014, Bruno said.

He chalks up the reversal of fortunes for the PC not only to improvements in the macroeconomic environment, but also work Intel has done in recent years to completely transform the PC environment.

Today's Intel PC can respond to natural language cues and has facial-recognition tools, with plans in the works to embed 3-D cameras into these computing devices, Bruno said.

Plus a few years ago, the company announced a move toward the Ultrabook, a high-end subnotebook.

"Why shouldn't your computer device be thin and light, have awesome battery life … and always be connected?" Bruno said, reiterating what Intel had said at the time.

Today, Intel has more than 25 PC designs in the market based on the most recent Core processors.

Kevin Murai, Synnex's president and CEO, credited the PC resurgence to Intel's Haswell microacrchitecture for boosting processing power, innovations to reduce power consumption and the rollout of the Windows 8 OS.

"We see traditional, noncloud-based IT as being a good core business," Murai said.

As PC-specific demand increased over the past year, Murai said sales of related items were spurred as well. He said he expects to see modest growth in PC sales going forward.

"It's a myth that on-premise IT is dying," said Murai, noting it's still the largest segment of IT and expected to drive 30 percent of the industry's overall growth through 2020.

Nearly half of Intel customers who end up buying a 2-in-1 laptop-tablet hybrid initially intended to purchase just a tablet, Bruno said, and had their minds changed through research and the education process.

"You can have an awesome tablet experience, but a full PC experience in a device is game-changing," Bruno said.

Bruno cited Intel's improvements in drive security, manageability and total cost of ownership for its 2-in-1 devices as game-changing, and said its all-in-one PCs provide significant innovation in both small-office environments as well as a family household setting.

"Computing devices of every size are exciting again," he said.

NEXT: HP, Lenovo Score Big With Devices

HP has enjoyed success with its ElitePad 2-in-1 device, which is secure, manageable, robust and designed for best-in-class business flow, according to Dion Weisler, executive vice president of HP's Printing and Personal Systems Group.

Other popular devices include the HP Pro X2 and the ElitePad 1000, which at 3.3 pounds, is the thinnest subnotebook ever made, Weisler said.

"The industry is not dead. Printing is not dead, despite some pundits having that belief," Weisler said. "The industry is alive and well."

Stephen DiFranco, vice president of HP's Americas Indirect Channel and Enterprise Groups, urged solution providers to move beyond deployment and think about PCs as a service. That would entail supplying, installing and maintaining a certain number of PCs for a monthly per-device fee, he said.

Lenovo is the world's largest PC company and the fastest-growing PC company in the United States for each of the past four years, according to Jay Parker, the company's North American president.

The China-based technology giant surpassed Apple in the past year to take the No. 3 position in U.S. PC sales, Parker said, and has shipped 7 million PCs in its 2014 fiscal year.

"A lot of you guys don't have the opportunity to do business with Apple," Parker said. "That's a market that's locked out from commercial channel sales."

Lenovo also has rolled out a PC Plus program to spur sales in IT categories related to the PC, an effort that Parker expects to be accelerated by Wednesday's closing of the x86 server business acquisition from IBM.

Randy Davis works in one vertical that's been pretty much immune to any type of decline in PC sales: higher education.

A computer buyer for NC State University Bookstores in Raleigh, N.C., Davis said students at four-year universities almost always prefer a light, portable laptop.

"It's pretty much required for university," he said.

People studying at two-year technical schools, or with unusual specializations, sometimes opt for a tablet though, Davis said.

Public safety organization employees also typically have laptops for use in an automobile, according to Kevin Christopher, regional sales manager for Ridgeline Technology in Auburn, Calif.

But as the purse strings have tightened in recent years, Christopher said many organizations have switched from supplying employees with both a desktop and laptop to providing them with a single device, which has taken a bite out of new sales.

PUBLISHED OCT. 3, 2014