Huawei and Xiaomi are involved in PC: Is there really no future for the PC industry?

Following Huawei's recent release of the Matebook, Xiaomi recently released its own Xiaomi Air notebook. So far, among the top five Chinese smartphone manufacturers in the global smartphone market (Lenovo itself is a PC manufacturer), two have announced their entry into the PC industry. At this point, the industry can't help but wonder, when the PC industry is constantly being criticized by the industry and is actually in decline, why are there still manufacturers who are determined to join the PC camp?

Although the PC market is in an overall decline, IDC's latest report believes that the improvement in inventory levels will give the PC market a better foundation in the second half of this year. In addition, the expiration of Microsoft's free upgrade to the Windows 10 operating system may stimulate consumers to buy more new devices. Another market research company, Gartner, said that the only good news for the global PC market is that after four consecutive quarters of decline, the North American PC market has finally achieved growth in shipments. What is even more gratifying to the industry is that IDC predicts that two-in-one notebooks will be a new growth driver for PCs in the future.

In addition to the above, the current PC market still has a considerable stock market, that is, there are still a considerable number of users who use old PCs that have been in use for more than 5 years, which means that there is still demand for PCs in the market. After all, users still need to use them to complete office, study, games, design and other tasks. As people's demand for PCs is becoming more and more demanding, how to further meet people's requirements for PCs in terms of intelligence, humanization, and thinness is precisely a challenge and opportunity for future innovation of PC products.

As Dion Weisler, CEO of HP, the largest PC manufacturer, said at the release of HP's financial report earlier this year: I think the entire PC industry is like a fish market. If the fish is fresh, you feel good; if the fish is not fresh, you won't buy it. The current situation is that there are a lot of stale fish in the fish market, and the price is very expensive. Whoever has fresh fish will sell well. It is precisely based on the overall prospects of the PC industry and their own strengths that "outliers" such as Huawei and Xiaomi, which have never been involved in the PC field, choose to get involved in the PC industry with Intel.

Speaking of innovation, Intel, as the leader of the PC chip industry, has never stopped. For example, not only large-size notebooks can now be made very thin and light, but thin and light notebooks can also have super long battery life and powerful performance, solving the contradiction of the original PC that cannot be balanced between thinness, performance and battery life; the birth of 2-in-1 devices proposed by Intel, and the introduction of more smartphone technologies and functions such as voice and fingerprint recognition and fast charging technology brought about by Intel chip upgrades, are all evidence of the continuous innovation of the PC industry. And these evidences undoubtedly tell the industry that today's PCs have actually subverted the image of traditional PCs in the market and among users, so-called this PC is no longer that PC.

As for products, in response to the market and users' higher demands for safe, reliable, efficient and portable notebooks in commercial environments, Intel has continuously upgraded processor performance and functions to meet the needs of different users. For example, the sixth-generation Intel® Core™ processor used in the Xiaomi notebook released this time has the ultra-long battery life, half-second wake-up, face login, wireless projection technology and other functions required for commercial use. It should be noted that these functions were unimaginable on previous PCs.

In addition to the commercial field, according to statistics from gamesindustry.biz, PC platform game sales dominated the global digital game market in 2015, with sales of digital games on all platforms reaching $61 billion in 2015, an increase of 8% over 2014. The sales of PC platform games exceeded $32 billion, which exceeded the total sales of mobile games (US$25 billion) and console games (US$4 billion). It can be seen that despite the rapid growth of mobile devices, it has not affected the status of PC as a mainstream gaming platform. With the addition of virtual reality technology, gaming PCs will be more powerful and more mainstream than ever before. Given that only about 1% of PCs can support virtual reality games well, in the future, we will see more PC products that meet the above configuration requirements. There is no reason for PC manufacturers not to cater to the trend of virtual reality entering the gaming field. In order to experience virtual reality games, many players will choose to update their game configurations or replace new PCs, and the sales of PC products will also increase.

It is a well-known fact that the above experience requires the continuous innovation of chips (such as the improvement of computing and graphics performance). For example, Intel's latest sixth-generation Intel® Core™ processor is said to improve computing performance by 2.5 times and graphics performance by 30 times. It is on this basis that users can achieve the best experience in the game. For example, 4K high-definition images, higher screen refresh rates and more advanced game interactions have allowed the PC industry to find new growth space in the game market.

Finally, the entry of manufacturers such as Huawei and Xiaomi will inject fresh blood into the traditional PC in terms of appearance design, technological innovation, and marketing. For example, PCs with higher "appearance", technologies that are closer to user needs (such as fast charging), and more popular promotion methods, etc. At the same time, Intel's cooperation with companies like Huawei and Xiaomi can also help companies form a complete ecological closed loop. For example, PCs can automatically synchronize photos on mobile phones to cloud servers, automatically update mobile phone systems, and even penetrate into smart homes. It is not difficult to see that PCs are still the personal computing center that connects the entire ecosystem.

To sum up, we believe that the fact that Huawei and Xiaomi have joined the competition in the PC industry itself shows that the PC industry still has considerable room for growth. The key lies in how to more accurately grasp the ever-changing new demands of the PC market and users under the new industrial situation and to innovate in a targeted manner based on this.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.