this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Consumer hardware is no longer a priority for manufacturers (www.xda-developers.com)
submitted 1 month ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 190 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (7 children)

Part of this has been a long-standing move by every industry to prioritize business-to-business sales as opposed to consumer sales simply because businesses have money and consumers don't, because businesses are pocketing all the profits and refusing to pay their employees (consumers) a living wage, let alone a thriving wage.

It's been a long time coming for the PC industry, because it's been a general trend for at least two decades as sales to business have become more profitable over consumer sales ever since the late 90s.

It's just more evidence that the bottom 90% of earners are just being priced out of anything but bare subsistence and the wealthy do not give a single fuck about it, in fact, they're embracing it.

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 68 points 1 month ago (3 children)

This is an important point in general. The old story of "voting with your wallet" is now more and more obviously mathematically absurd.

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 51 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can only vote with your wallet if there's something in it.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Which is exactly why conservatives want to push that line of ideology, because in a democratic society we all have equal say, but under capitalism the landowning aristocrat class become de facto lords and kings. Which is exactly what we are seeing happening right now.

It's the same bullshit they say about wanting "small government"- no, they want no government, not a democratic one at least, because that is the only thing keeping them from wielding their capital as a political tool, something it is already feebly equipped to do because of the power inherent in capital and unregulated ownership. Low taxes- same thing; high taxes are an equalizer that aims to create benefit for all of society together, low taxes, as conservatives always want, mean proportionally more for those who are already most well off.

On a long enough timeline, capitalism will always and causally turn into a form of feudalism. Shit, it IS feudalism, with extra steps.

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Happening? don't you mean happened? Most top politicans come from the same familys and schools and have done for significantly longer than I've been alive.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 8 points 1 month ago

We are feeling the brute force of what you are saying right now on a scale previously not seen. Of course this has been a generational play, that lies at the core of feudalism and patriarchal rule- inheritance of wealth.

[–] nforminvasion@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Top 10% owns 93% of stocks and accounted for 55% of market activity in early 2025, before tariffs and mass layoffs and an unnamed recession. They're probably at 60 -65% of revenue now. You're absolutely right. The rich have been working to remove us from the equation for decades. In our buying power, and in our labor power with AI.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

and in our labor power with AI.

Let's be real though, this is less about actually replacing workers with AI that is often completely wrong because it's not actually "thinking" and doesn't actually know what it is doing. It's much more about using the specter of AI and over-hyped arguments about what it could do, given time, to justify workforce reductions and pay reductions.

It has far less to do with actually replacing workers with AI and far more to do with justifying worse working conditions and worse pay without as much social fuss over why.

AI has some very useful tightly-specific niche applications, but "general purpose AI" is a joke that isn't going anywhere realistic at the moment. Especially if we have to burn down our planet burning up fossil fuels to power software that is only doing a best guess of what the next string of text should be.

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[–] tomiant@piefed.social 6 points 1 month ago

I always hated that fucking saying. No, you vote with YOUR VOTE. If you vote with your dollars the man with a billion dollars has a billion votes more than you do.

[–] nforminvasion@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I am so glad to see someone else talking about this. Yeah, We're going back to feudalism... And only the upper ranks of society will be able to afford goods and be able to engage in trade.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I mean, it's very arguable that we've just been doing "feudalism with extra steps" for a very long time anyway.

To be less US/Europe-centric than my original post, the majority of the world has been in the "priced out of anything but bare subsistence" basket for most of the history of modern capitalism. Only the citizens of the Imperial Democracies of the Western world were benefiting while the majority of the Southern and Eastern hemispheres were simply locked out from being beneficiaries either through trade embargoes or outright exploitation via not paying foreign workers the home-country equivalent, and instead paying them a much lower "localized" rate.

It's really that the Imperial Boomerang has finally made it's way home to the citizens of the West.

[–] tomiant@piefed.social 9 points 1 month ago

Yet another lie of capitalism- that demand dictates supply. If people want something, capitalism will solve the problem because greed will solve every problem, right? WRONG. It doesn't take into consideration that scale and logistics and infrastructure and mass production all collude and interact in ways that can and will easily create isolated and unexpected functional consequences just like this one.

Capitalism itself is such a dumb and evil creation that the only thing that keeps it running is to have laws that limit its destructive power- unfortunately, since money is power, capitalism quickly supersedes rule of law and democracy, creating a system of government where feudal lords rule over what basically amounts to serfdom. Surely a more comfortable serfdom than in the 1300's, but most certainly lacking the basic freedoms of a democratic society, and only so long as the lords so wish and comfort isn't taken away at their whims due to opposition or otherwise.

Fuck this shit.

[–] verdi@tarte.nuage-libre.fr 7 points 1 month ago

Eat the rich! 

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[–] UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 73 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm looking forward to cheap Chinese video cards that out perform Nvidia shit for 1/4 the price.

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I hope you're right because Intel and AMD still can't compete with high end Nvidia cards, and that's how we ended up with a $5000 5090.

[–] muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

AMD can already beat nvidia at the price tiers most people actually buy at, and Intel is gaining ground way faster than anyone expected.

But outside of the GPU shakeup, I could give a shit about Intel. Let China kill us. We earned this.

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 month ago

We also partly ended up with the 5k 5090 because it's just the TITAN RTX of the 50xx generation - the absolute top of the line a card where you pay 200% extra for that last +10% performance.
nVidia just realized few generations back that naming those cards the xx90 gets a bunch of more people to buy them, because they always desperately need to have the shiniest newest xx90 cards, no matter the cost.

[–] drev@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

FIVE THOUSAND?!

Jesus nun-fucking Christ, what an absolute scam. I bought a 1070 for $220 in the first few months after release. Guess I'll just have to hope it can run for another 10 years...

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[–] dhork@lemmy.world 47 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is yet another thing I blame on American Business sacrificing itself on the altar of Shareholder Value. It's no longer acceptable for a public business to simply make a profit. It has to grow that profit, every quarter, without fail.

So, simply having a good consumer product division that makes money won't be enough. At some point some executive will decide that he can't possibly get his bonus if that's all they do, and decide they need to blow it all up to chase larger profits elsewhere.

Maybe we need a small, private company to come along and start making good consumer hardware. They still need components, though, so will have to navigate getting that from public companies who won't return their calls. And even once they are successful, the first thing they will do is cash out and go public, and the cycle starts again.

[–] SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe we need a small, private company to come along and start making good consumer hardware.

I've always wanted to start a business like this. "Generic Brand" household goods. Not fancy, just solidly functional base models but with modular upgradability. Wish you bought the WiFi capable washer? Buy the module for $30. Everything would be fully user serviceable and upgradable (within reason), so parts sales ensure sustained income once market saturation is reached.

[–] dhork@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

It's not totally out of the realm of possibility. Michael Dell did it, after all, but he did it in a different time.

And Dell is actually a good case study for all this. It went public rather quickly after it started growing, but grew a bit stagnant by the 2000's. So much so that 2013, Michael Dell orchestrated a leveraged buyout of his own company (with the help of venture capital) to make it private again. He pretty much admitted that the changes he wanted to make to the company would be impossible while it was still public. It stayed private for a while, but went public again as part of some deal made after it acquired the parent company of VMware.

Another notable thing is that Carl Ichan owned a large chunk of Dell, both in its first public incarnation and in its private incarnation. When Dell tried to take it private, Ichan challenged the plan, and thought about putting in his own bid, only to back off when he decided it wasn't worth the effort to revive the company. Still, he was publicly against Dell's buyout plan but was outvoted by other shareholders. Yet, he must have still held a part of the private company, because Ichan also protested it's second plan to go public, and sued to force Dell to increase its terms to the private holders.

Michael Dell is no saint, but I conclude that he realized that the company meant more than a spreadsheet, and needed a purpose to justify its existence. He also realized that in order to sustain a business over the long term, having to constantly sustain quarterly numbers may be counterproductive. I think Carl Ichan, on the other hand, only cares about Number Go Up, and doesn't care at all about how the company makes that happen. Over the long term, that will never be sustainable, but fuck you all, he got his bag already.

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[–] neclimdul@lemmy.world 41 points 1 month ago

Kind of makes sense really when you think about it. The vast majority of consumers have had all their wealth eroded over decades to the point no one can buy anything. Better to let the AIs buy everything now.

[–] DevotedShitStain69@lemmy.world 37 points 1 month ago

Imma remember what Curcial and others are doing, so when the AI bubble pops I'll skip on all their products.

[–] varjen@lemmy.world 29 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I see a future where all computing is done in the cloud and home computers are just dumb terminals. An incredibly depressing future. Customers not users is the goal.

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 14 points 1 month ago

This has been predicted and worked towards since the 90s.

[–] lavander@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 month ago

ChromeOS was exactly mean for that

[–] Atropos@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They can pry my hardware from my cold, dead hands.

Also my car with knobs. I will continue to maintain that car for as long as possible.

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[–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just a reminder that "consumer" means human. They're fucking over everyone in favour of "corporations" (aka a few select humans)

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[–] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Also, this has been the case (or at least planned) for a while.

Pascal (the GTX 1000 series) and Ampere (the RTX 3000 series) used the exact same architecture for datacenter/gaming. The big gaming dies were dual use and datacenter-optimized. This habit sort of goes back to ~2008, but Ampere and the A100 is really where "datacenter first" took off.

AMD announced a plan to unify their datacenter/gaming architecture awhile ago, and prioritized the MI300X before that. And EPYC has always been the priority, too.

Intel wanted to do this, but had some roadmap trouble.

These companies have always put datacenter first, it just took this much drama for the consumer segment to largely notice.

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

Yeah no shit?

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 month ago

Consumer sales are very very trackable. Off channel bulk sales can be very hard to verify and I'm sure that's not being used to prop up valuation. Not at all.

[–] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Even as consumer revenue remains sizable and maintains steady year-on-year growth, it finds itself competing against segments that grow exponentially faster and earn more per unit.

So it has nothing to do with people having less money. It honestly gives me hope, things could change with a bubble burst.

[–] forrgott@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The point is to make the bubble bigger, then they'll pretend that's why they have to exit consumer market.

The goal is the so called "thin client" - i.e. absolutely everything in cloud.

Edit: my phone can't spell

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Bingo! And they’re doing it to enterprises too. Why do you think copilot is shoved into everything? Why do you think Recall is creeping towards being mandatory? Why do you think OneDrive isn’t optional anymore?

They don’t just want your data for advertising. They want to watch the entire capital machine in real-time to make sure there aren’t any gaps, and dissent, and most of all, anyone getting the jump on something new and big. OneDrive to rule them all.

[–] forrgott@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I hear ya.

It pisses me off the way they market this shit as AI; just a god damn surveillance tool, hiding behind a fucking chat bot.

And, anybody reading who's tempted to defend the technology, fuck off - it's a prediction algorithm. A fancy one, but that's it. There no steps or logic or reasoning. There's nothing hiding in the "black box". No steps taken to construct the response - just statistical analysis on steroids spewing out most likely matches.

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[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

At what point can AI companies play the “too big to fail” card though, like the banks?

Bubble bursts, and the government uses our taxes to bail out the companies. Again.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago

The nazis will bail out everyone who bends the knee and submits a bribe. It's not like they're spending their own money...

[–] swade2569@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Probably because the hardware is going into systems that eliminate jobs and we become broke. All that gear is gonna sit on the shelf if we can’t afford it.

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

You can make a lot of money selling imaginary products to nonfunctional industries.

[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

With the exception of a few tasks most modern hardware should last a while doing everyday tasks. If you’re due for an upgrade do it and then get off the consumerism train for a while. If you’ve got something within the past two or three years you’re set for a while.

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[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

This will not stop until the ultra-rich are destroyed as a class. They have constructed a parallel economy, and we are all their serfs. History shows this situation can't last and the question is whether they can be parted with their wealth peacefully or not

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