First of all, and for the part that touches us, is to define what breakthrough innovations are. These are those that change the way of doing a job, creating a new category of products that ends up replacing the previous technology in use and over time. In recent decades, we have seen several examples, for example the original LCD screens looked worse than CRT, but they take up less space and consume less, digital cameras are not limited in the number of photos and we do not have to take them to develop like the reel ones. No one has shelves of movies anymore due to the fact that digital downloading and streaming are so much more convenient.
Understanding what a breakthrough innovation is
One of the things that we have to take into account is the concept of performance and how the average user ends up capturing it. This is nothing more than the ability to do a specific task, while this is in deficiency there will be a requirement for it to be greater. Once the sweet spot has been reached, every improvement of it over what is necessary is seen as a luxury and interest begins to focus on other metrics.
For example, in the case of the battle between hard drives and SSDs, we have that the former win in storage cost, however, there is a point where the extra Teras do not provide additional value to the user, since each time they become less useful. We can also try to sell an MMO mouse with a high DPI, programmable macros and extra buttons to someone who will use it for office, he will not use them and they are not an additional value.
That is, each of us is a world and we have a different way of absorbing technology. And it is important to take this into account due to the fact that sometimes what may seem like an ideal scale to us is not for the rest of the people. That is why when there is a shift in consumption, the most enthusiastic are usually the most reluctant. Since it always starts out as a low-spec product for the average user.
Is the end of gaming towers near?
What we say is not an affirmation, but rather a question. Today there are a series of guidelines regarding energy consumption that must be met to sell a complete tower computer in stores. Of course, the current standard comes from the year 2014, when although there was concern about climate change, the regulatory bodies were not taken over by people obsessed with the issue.
At the same time we have that the ATX 3.0 standard has increased the energy consumption of PCs, an outrage and although at the moment this is not noticeable, since it is rather a short-term future, the obsession with reducing climate change and The carbon footprint will sooner or later make bureaucrats around the world, those who regulate which products can go out and which cannot, decide to veto the tower to play extremely powerful.
Meanwhile, in stores, laptops are flying in terms of sales and the pre-built gaming towers that are usually seen are selling less and less. Laptops are the breaking innovation of towers and when these are good enough they leave them gathering dust and don’t sell. So the incentive is less and less. If we add to this an unsustainable price increase for the gaming market, in the end what remains is only the “Do it yourself” market.
How would this affect the component market?
In the event that it is decided to cut the maximum consumption of tower PCs, this would mean the disappearance of high-performance products that take advantage of this high level of power. If we have to make a prediction about what this “dystopian” future may bring us, it would be that everything that has no equivalent in laptops is going to disappear. Which does not mean that we are going to stop seeing desktop systems, but rather that we will see a boom in systems with everything integrated or a boom in MiniPCs.
