The PC market in 2022 ended in a bleak way, PC shipments and sales have fallen to a trough, for major PC manufacturers, and in the predictions of relevant institutions, the PC market in 2023 is afraid to be even more bleak. How to grab limited users from other manufacturers has become a problem that all PC manufacturers need to think about.
To attract the attention of users, the easiest way is undoubtedly to reduce prices, although price war has always been considered to hurt the enemy 1000 self-damage 800 practice, but in the time of life and death, dead friends are not dead and poor, can win a little more users, you can get more initiative when the market recovers in the future.
Therefore, since the first quarter, we have seen PC manufacturers in the thin and light book market crazy roll, repeatedly refreshing users' perception of laptop prices.
2023, for survival
According to a report released by Canalys, global personal PC shipments in 2022 were only 434 million units, down 13% from nearly 500 million units shipped in 2021. If the data is accurate to the brand, among the top five brands in shipments, Apple has the highest annual growth rate, -2.4%, which is due to Apple's ARM version of MacBook released this year, excellent battery life and good performance, making it favored by many users in the business market.
Outside of Apple, Lenovo's 2022 growth rate is 20.4%, HP's is -25.4%, Dell is -16%, and Samsung is -9.8%. It can be seen that in addition to Samsung, the shipments of the traditional three giants of Windows notebooks have fallen sharply, showing that the purchasing power of the market continues to weaken, and the personal PC market has returned to the downturn before 2020 after experiencing explosive growth in 2020 and 2021.
Source: Canalys
Although from the data point of view, shipments in 2022 fell so much, the main reason is that shipments in 2021 exceeded expectations, affected by the remote work demand of the epidemic, personal PC sales in 2021 showed a significant increase, and in 2022, with the exposure of most countries and regions to the epidemic lockdown, the demand for remote work decreased, and most of the purchasing power has been released in 2021.
It is undeniable that the demand for personal PCs is significantly decreasing, and in addition to reasons such as the decrease in the demand for remote work, the skyrocketing performance of personal PCs in recent years has also become a factor. As the battle between AMD and Intel in the CPU market becomes more and more fierce, a laptop with a price of three or four thousand yuan in 2022 is already better than a product of six or seven thousand yuan in 2020.
For most office and entertainment users, today's personal PC performance has become excessive, making the replacement cycle longer than before, and a similar situation is happening in the mobile phone market. Under the influence of multiple factors, the longer replacement cycle and reduced demand, many reports believe that the demand for personal PCs in 2023 will maintain a downward trend.
In this context, PC manufacturers can only launch more competitive products if they want to maintain market share.
The era of full-scale involution has arrived
To be honest, before the release of new products this year, I actually did not expect that the major manufacturers would be rolled up to this extent. Generally speaking, we evaluate a laptop from only several dimensions: workmanship, performance release, screen and battery life, depending on the product characteristics and design direction, the focus will be different.
Therefore, generally we will divide laptops into several types: high-performance, all-round and business. Among them, high-performance notebooks are mainly aimed at users with high-performance needs, often equipped with the latest high-performance discrete graphics cards and processors.
All-round notebook computer is a comprehensive product between business and high performance, with certain performance, can handle tasks with high performance requirements such as rendering, design, games, etc., and at the same time has the appearance and battery life of business laptop, so that it can meet the needs of business occasions and mobile office. Generally speaking, the all-around book will choose the latest version of the processor + low-end discrete graphics card, which has a clear performance ceiling compared to high performance.
As for business laptops, mainly designed for mobile office and other needs, often using thin and light design and longer battery life, business laptops generally do not carry discrete graphics cards, and will choose the latest generation of low-voltage or standard pressure processors to reduce real-time power consumption as much as possible and improve battery life.
Among the three types of laptops, the demand for business laptops has declined the most, so it is also the most competitive market. Lenovo, Acer, HP, Asus and other manufacturers have launched new products in a targeted manner, and they are very conservative in their pricing strategies.
For example, Lenovo's Xiaoxin series focusing on the low-end market, the new Xiaoxin 14 2023 Ryzen Edition launched this year, equipped with Ryzen 5 7530U processor, 16GB memory and 512GB solid-state drive, 16:10 1920*1200 screen, integrated metal body, weight 1.46KG, thickness of 16.9mm, support 65W PD fast charging.
Source: JD.com
From the parameter point of view, it is undoubtedly a very standard mid-range thin and light book, according to the pricing of previous years, the starting price should be about 4599 yuan, considering the integrated metal body and Lenovo's after-sales support, this pricing is not high. So what is the starting price of the Xiaoxin 14 2023 model? The answer is 3599 yuan, although it is a pre-sale preferential price, but after the official sale, the price has only increased by less than 200 yuan, and the supply is sufficient.
To know whether a manufacturer really wants to lower the price of the product, you only need to see whether the product is fully supplied after it goes on sale, Xiaoxin 14 2023 version can easily start in official channels until now, indicating that Lenovo has indeed decided to sell products at this price, not some "monkey" behavior.
Coincidentally, the veteran manufacturer Acer also launched a similar configuration of the product, the same Ryzen 5 7000 series processor, the same metal body, even lower weight, thinner, the price is 3999 yuan.
Source: JD.com
So is there any lower? HP Rui 14, the same processor configuration, workmanship, screen performance slightly shrunk, asking price of 3299 yuan, and even only need an additional +100 yuan, you can buy a 16+1TB version, if the screen requirements are higher, then it is necessary to increase the price to 3599 yuan (16+512), which is actually the same as the price of Lenovo, Acer and other brands.
Source: JD.com
If it was two years ago, the products of first-tier manufacturers in this price segment were basically i3 and R3, and there were few cases of the first mid-range processors. But in this year's notebook computer market, it seems to have become a tacit understanding, and even HP is more involuted in storage space, becoming the first first-line manufacturer to popularize 1T solid-state drives within 4,000 yuan.
In the higher 5000-6000 price range, Lenovo, Acer, Asus, HP and other manufacturers have basically put the original high-end business technology and design to this price point, and high-specification OLED screens, ultra-thin and light designs, high-performance processors, etc. have become common configurations in this price segment.
Source: JD.com
Although from the current product pricing point of view, the internal volume of PC manufacturers is still limited to the low-end market of business notebooks, but some second- and third-tier manufacturers have begun to use price wars to challenge first-line brands with huge market shares, such as mechanical revolution, colorful and other brands, and are setting off a new round of high-performance price wars.
If sales of personal PCs still don't pick up, I'm afraid a similar trend will extend to more product types and price ranges.
The little abacus behind the "involution" price
From the price point of view, this year's low-end business laptop pricing is much lower than in previous years, but from the perspective of workmanship and configuration, there is basically no significant shrinkage, what is the secret behind it? How exactly are the costs saved?
In terms of several Ryzen laptops we have just introduced, we can see that the two processors of Ryzen 5 7530U or 7520U are basically configured, although the model is the latest Ryzen 7000 series processor, in fact, from the parameter performance and architecture, it can basically be determined to be the overclocked version of Ryzen 5 5600U.
Source: AMD
Therefore, the essence of these two processors is a mid-range processor vest released two years ago, of course, there is no problem in terms of performance to meet daily office and entertainment needs, but it is not a new generation of processors worth looking forward to, if the laptop you are using now happens to be equipped with the Ryzen 5000 series, then there is no need to replace.
From the product lines of major manufacturers, it can be seen that the Intel version of the same product line is often much higher in price, in addition to the Intel processor itself cost higher than AMD, the 13th generation Core this time is a real arrival of a lot of performance improvement, not the vest of the previous generation processor.
However, this mainly refers to Intel's H55 series, and some product lines that often appear in the low-end product line are actually still the overclocked version of the previous generation of vests, although they have indeed improved in performance, but there is no difference in essence.
In addition, in order to save costs, many manufacturers use the previous generation of molds, reducing the research and development costs of reopening molds. And the recent hardware prices are also falling, flash memory particle prices have fallen to a new historical low, LCD panels are also in the price of low time period, under the influence of various factors, manufacturers can give a series of new products at prices significantly lower than previous years.
So, if your laptop is a thin and light book from four or five years ago, then this year may be a good time to update, for only three or four thousand yuan, you can get a product comparable to the mid-range laptop in 2022. If you are willing to increase the budget to more than five thousand, the experience in terms of performance, screen, workmanship and other aspects will be qualitatively improved.
After all, if you miss the 2023 year of involution, no one knows what the situation will be next year.