The PC business has been on a steep decline as of late due various factors, but mainly because of the increasing computing prowess and appeal of lighter, slimmer and more portable devices. In hopes of showcasing the capabilities of the next generation PCs and pull up the industry's nose-diving the sales, five of major technology companies — Intel, Dell, Lenovo, HP and Windows — have bonded and are collaborating on the "PC Does WHAAAT?!" advertising campaign.
Earlier this month, the International Data Corporation (IDC), published a report which detailed that the decline of PC shipments for Q3 of 2015 is worse than expected. It was forecasted to decline by about 9.2 percent but ended up dipping down by 10.8 percent.
"Still, there is some hope in the fourth quarter," said IDC Research Director for Devices & Displays Linn Huang. "New designs running Windows 10 and powered by Intel's new Skylake processors are coming to market and may represent the most compelling reason we've had in years for consumers to upgrade their PCs."
The companies' united stance through the "PC Does WHAAAT?!" campaign is in line with their upcoming device releases that are expected to happen before the end of 2015. Heads of the collaborating organizations have recently come together and did a webcast explaining details regarding their partnership.
The product of their $70 million marketing collaboration, which started in June 2015, are ads that last anywhere from 15 seconds to half a minute. The commercials involve computers manufactured by Dell, Lenovo and HP running on Windows OS powered by the sixth-generation Intel processors.
Within the five varied videos ads that were produced, one thing remains constant and that is the high-pitched enunciation of the "PC does what?!" line, which appears to be shouted out of exaggerated amazement for things that even a five year old knows. Nonetheless, in the crudest of ways, the commercials presented what they need to, sort of.
"The role of the PC is so fundamental — how you learn, how you interact. It's our time to highlight that to customers," said Dell CMO Karen Quintos.
However, the question still remains. Is it enough to make people allot their resources for a new PC? Elaborating further, have these technology companies made enough technological advances to show that the new PCs are significantly powerful and that buying a new one is a need, which usurps that of handhelds?
Processors from a decade ago can still run most of today's applications without significant issues. Intel's Core 2 duo offerings from 2006 still meet the minimum requirement for most of the latest games. Moreover, Windows 10 can run without problems on a dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. Applications these days have been optimized better and thus, performs well even with outdated hardware.
Furthermore handhelds, even with their slimmer, lighter and more portable nature, are now capable of performing most tasks that were previously native to PCs. Hence, in areas other than "proper" gaming, immersive content consumption, extensive multitasking, image manipulation and video editing, handhelds can already be substitute for the PC, in a degraded fashion, of course.
If there's anything that can convince people to buy a new PC, it would be virtual and augmented reality, which definitely require more computing power - a lot more than what the current commercial PC generation offers. Instead of these ads, why don't they invest to support that?
Below is one of the "PC Does WHAAAT?!" infomercials. It was uploaded on Intel's YouTube channel but was not listed. YouTube reminds the viewers to "be considerate and think twice before sharing". Bear in mind that there are certain things you cannot unsee. You've been warned.
