For the first time since 2001 (9/11, DotCom Crash), PC sales fell on a year over year basis. Among other reasons, analysts attribute this decline to the ongoing obsolescence of the PC platform, now heavily cannibalized by smartphones and tablets.
Being in IT myself, there were two major points that struck me about this article. First is that the long-held dominance of the "Wintel" duopoly is unambiguously in secular decline and yet neither company - Microsoft nor Intel, has products in the pipeline that bring anywhere near the same level of revenue or profit margins as the fading PC. In other words 20+ years of monopoly-funded obsolete bloatware is finally coming to a long overdue bad ending.
The major point though is that both Dell and Hewlett Packard saw sales plummet by 14% and 16%, respectively and even Apple saw its Mac sales decline by 6%. And yet overall, global PC sales only dropped by around 1.2%, so clearly someone gained market share in this equation. Bear in mind that all of these aforementioned companies: Microsoft, Intel, Dell, HP are U.S. based companies. So who was the beneficiary of this dislocation? Lenovo, based in China, saw a massive year over year sales increase of 10% into a declining market, clearly all due to market share gain. For those who have never heard of Lenovo, they bought IBM's PC business back in 2005, IBM being the most recent U.S. company to throw in the towel on PCs. Lenovo's competitive advantage is that they do not have bloated and unsustainable profit margins to support, so they are able to come in and eat everyone else's lunch and watch as the U.S.-based companies plummet into oblivion - Dell and HP now tripping over themselves in a race to the bottom. As I documented in 2008, this is what will eventually happen with everything made in China...
Closing The Barn Door After The Horses Are Out
No doubt, the Idiocracy will eventually wake up from its American Idol-watching food coma and look to impose trade sanctions on China - not realizing of course that all of the aforementioned vendors' PCs are made in China, hence a knee-jerk reaction that will hurt all of these companies the same way. More importantly, and the entire point of this post, the jobs are not the issue anymore - because the jobs are already gone. The only thing left are the profits, and all indications are that they are heading out the same fucking door. For once I actually agree with the sycophantic media whores on CNBS and Faux News when they say that Romney and his 1% brethren created more jobs than Obama. Unfortunately, those jobs are all in China.
Honey Boo Boo @Full Retard
And unfortunately, in the fullness of time, history's spotlight won't be on George W. Bush for using 9/11 as the excuse for driving the U.S. Ponzi into full overdrive by bankrupting the U.S. with two interminable wars and a tax cut for the jet-set who already have most of their money offshore. History instead will focus on the 52 million morons who voted for that chimp, not once but twice, even as their own jobs were being offshored right before their very eyes. And let's not forget that Bush's second election in 2004 occurred after it was fully acknowledged that the premise for invading Iraq (WMDs + 9/11 participation) was totally fabricated. Imagine the empire-ending hubris of invading another country on a totally false pretense and then camping out for an entire decade - "Ah fuck, we invaded the wrong country. Get out the map again. Did you say Iraq or Iran?". These right wing hypocrites don't want their government to do anything except cut taxes and invade other countries so that they can tell foreigners how to do everything. If crony capitalism isn't working in the U.S., why the hell would it work anywhere else? The blowback from this current hill-billy version of Pax Americana is going to be historic.
Finally, for those outside the U.S., "Honey Boo Boo" is just the latest new low point for the Idiocracy. Picture "Little Miss Sunshine" meets "Deliverance" and you get the idea. Presented if you can imagine on TLC network aka. The Learning Channel. Again, those who say I am a pessimist at this juncture are eight balling Prozac.
