PC sales continue growth in US, boost Intel

PC sales beat projections in the third quarter and gave a boost to Intel as a result, although global shipments declined by 3.9 percent year-over-year, according to IDC. Still, PC shipments exceeded projections by 3.2 percent and some parts of the market show promise. IDC did not include tablets with detachable keyboards in their PC numbers, although they have done well recently. Gaming laptops are another area that remain robust, especially as they become slimmer to compete in an increasingly mobile world. The US market also maintained growth of 1.7 percent, with Dell and Lenovo seeing double digit growth in that market.

Intel should be pleased with the PC market performance as its stock price jumped on the news, according to the Wall Street Journal. Intel chips remain an essential part of modern PCs as the company's only x86 chip competitor AMD has largely fallen behind in the CPU market and now concentrates mostly on graphics cards against Nvidia. Intel is not under any illusions, though. The company's future earnings estimates were below analyst projections and the company continues to bet its future on servers and the Internet of Things.

Intel chips are essential when it comes to gaming, as most PC gaming is done on Windows and Intel makes the chips with the highest performance. Many gamers opt for laptops over desktops these days as the former have made considerable gains in closing the performance gap. These machines still tend to be large and heavy compared to their ultrabook brethren.

This is starting to change. Companies such as Razer have started competing seriously to make slim gaming machines. The latest lightweight gaming laptop is the EVO15-S from Origin PC. Engadget said "slim gaming laptops are on the rise" and that this machine from Origin allows users to "play modern games smoothly, including some VR." The PC runs an Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card and starts at $2,083.

Gaming PCs cannot prop up the PC market alone, of course. The US markethas seen some growth because it came at a time when many people are upgrading their computers. For much of the world, upgrading PCs remains a low priority. IDC, however, left out certain kinds of computers from its definition of PCs that are seeing higher growth. These include tablets with detachable keyboards, which have done well relative to the rest of the market.