PC shipments dipped 28% during the holidays as the pandemic boom ends

[Shawn Knight]

In a nutshell: The pandemic boom for the PC market has come to an end as evident by the latest market report from IDC. Global shipments of traditional PCs slid to 67.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2022. That's down 28.1 percent versus the same period in 2021 and is comparable to the fourth quarter of 2018 when Intel was strolling with its supply of processors.

Lenovo led the way in Q4, shipping 15.5 million PCs followed by HP with 13.2 million units. Dell placed third with 10.8 million systems shipped during the holiday quarter while Apple moved 7.5 million Macs over the same period. All experienced negative growth compared to Q4 2021.

With 292.3 million units shipped for the full year, the market is well above pre-pandemic levels. Still, there's reason for concern as IDC points out that many users have relatively new PCs and the global economy isn't in great shape.

As Adobe noted in its recent holiday shopping analysis, retailers turned to discounts in the fourth quarter to spur demand. The PC industry wasn't immune as average selling prices (ASPs) across several channels fell in hopes of moving excess inventory.

IDC Research Manager Jitesh Ubrani noted that despite the efforts, inventory management will remain a key issue in the coming quarters and could continue to impact ASPs.

According to the market research firm, the general consensus is that segments of the PC market could return to growth by the end of 2023 with a broader market recovery to follow sometime in 2024.

Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 earlier this week, which could drive sales in the near term. Windows 7's global market share sat at 11.2 percent as of December 2022 according to StatCounter while Windows 8 was installed on just 0.66 percent of machines worldwide.

Windows 10, with a market share of nearly 68 percent, isn't too far away from reaching end of life status either. Microsoft has set a date of October 14, 2025, for its retirement.

Image credit: Mart Production

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https://www.techspot.com/news/97239-pc-shipments-dipped-28-during-holidays-pandemic-boom.html

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"Market recovery now expected in 2024"

LMFAO no. Market analysts are completely divorced from reality.

"Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 and Windows 8 earlier this week, which could drive sales in the near term. Windows 7's global market share sat at 11.2 percent as of December 2022 according to StatCounter while Windows 8 was installed on just 0.66 percent of machines worldwide.

Windows 10, with a market share of nearly 68 percent, isn't too far away from reaching end of life status either. Microsoft has set a date of October 14, 2025, for its retirement."

It wont. Most of the machines still in use running this old stuff doesnt work with windows 11 because MS decided to blow chunks into users faces with TPM 2.0 and bizzare CPU gen requirements. So those people will simply stay on their outdated boxes as long as possible. Same with 10, over 50% IIRC of machines running 10 today cannot run 11 for the same reasons.

A LOT of these are in second or third world countries. They cant afford to buy $1500 US machines. So theyll continue to use outdated hardware and unpatched OSes. XP 2.0 anyone?

 

[Julnor]

If you don't play games, a Linux distro is cheaper(free) and easier to just switch to. Mint is a particularly great distro for anyone that just wants to run older hardware for basic tasks and not have to struggle with their OS or change a lot of stuff---but you can still customize it (more than Windows).

If you do play games, Steam Deck is leading the charge nowadays, SteamOS is quickly becoming viable and with a larger install base that will create significant pressures on devs to have a working SteamOS build. That lessens MS' monopoly and frankly if judges had any tech intelligence, and anti-trust regulators were doing their jobs, they'd force MS to share DirectX and other gaming code with Linux and make a viable alternative---you're not supposed to be able to have a legal monopoly or hide behind a pretext. It has to be a legit alternative. There will eventually be another lawsuit as Boomer judges age out.

If you don't want to setup Steam/Proton, Nobara becomes an option as it also does most of that for you out of the box.

So now with Windows unnecessary, people that don't need it can stick on older hardware. Another reason to want that is the insane costs of the hardware, they are divorced from financial reality. Consoles become an option here too.

I am not advocating or insisting anyone take any option, but I want people to realize and acknowledge there are choices, and for us as a community to have that discourse and make people aware. Tech has too many fanboys and too much hostility, initially this hobby was about choice. Everyone chose what worked best for their needs. It was rather diverse and prices were rather low without the fanboys and I guess influencer pressure that drove prices so high. We should want to go back to that.

Nobody can predict the market. But tech had a huge bull run and it looks like a blowoff top already, tech is generally not that lucrative. Sector theory indicates it's going to drop back down, and probably should do so for a long time (took near 20 years to recover from the last time). So we'll see. I think it would be a shame if these prices stay or only drop for a short term and then continue their ascent.

 

[takaozo]

What a surprise........like they expect "pandemic sales" to last forever.

Last 3 years every family got at least 1 PC/Laptop. Even the crappy "celeron" would to the job another 2-3 years.

 

[Lounds]

Everyone's got their WFH laptops and desktops. What did they expect that we'd all replace them like phones every few years?

 

[nismo91]

In this economy they should be glad it's only 28% decline.

as more and more industries turn to web-based services, doesn't make sense to upgrade your PC so often just to run those web services. in fact I hope chromeOS flex would gain more traction. older compatible machines runs very fast on chromeos. come to think of it, windows RT could've been chromeos if microsoft wasn't so busy trying to push sales of new devices and new OS.

 

[Nobina]

Surely it has nothing to do with PCs and PC parts costing as much as a used car.

 

[neeyik]

Surely it has nothing to do with PCs and PC parts costing as much as a used car.

Probably not, as retail prices are considerably higher than those paid by the likes of Dell and Lenovo. For the vendors listed in the survey, the bulk of their PCs shipped are laptops (though the survey covers desktops, laptops, and workstations) and there are still plenty of reasonably priced models available -- as others have noted, though, if folks have already bought one in the past two years or so, they're unlikely to want to get a new one if it's still working perfectly well.

IDC's figures are still preliminary, as most vendors haven't issued full-year financial statements yet (edit: or Q1'23 statements), but the company estimates that Apple will have shipped a few more units year-on-year and Asus will have only dropped around 6%. The rest have fallen by around 17% but HP appears to be hit the worst, at 25%.

It will be interesting to read HP's Q1'23 financial statement, to see what it's blaming the decline on.

 

[JamesBlond]

NOTHING TO DO WIT PANDEMIC ENDING

1. Economy Crashing
2. Jobless market
3. Zero Increase in pay
4. Gaming market will collapse soon as games become pay to win

Gone is the market for a good reason

 

[GoldenGoat]

The chip shortage is over. They need to stop pricing like it's not. And stop raising prices just because "inflation" or they will be losing a lot of sales.

 

[Hodor]

If you don't play games, a Linux distro is cheaper(free) and easier to just switch to. Mint is a particularly great distro for anyone that just wants to run older hardware for basic tasks and not have to struggle with their OS or change a lot of stuff---but you can still customize it (more than Windows).

If you do play games, Steam Deck is leading the charge nowadays, SteamOS is quickly becoming viable and with a larger install base that will create significant pressures on devs to have a working SteamOS build. That lessens MS' monopoly and frankly if judges had any tech intelligence, and anti-trust regulators were doing their jobs, they'd force MS to share DirectX and other gaming code with Linux and make a viable alternative---you're not supposed to be able to have a legal monopoly or hide behind a pretext. It has to be a legit alternative. There will eventually be another lawsuit as Boomer judges age out.

If you don't want to setup Steam/Proton, Nobara becomes an option as it also does most of that for you out of the box.

So now with Windows unnecessary, people that don't need it can stick on older hardware. Another reason to want that is the insane costs of the hardware, they are divorced from financial reality. Consoles become an option here too.

I used Mint and it's great for many things, but when it comes to 3rd party software it's no match to Windows. I can find more excellent FREE apps for Windows than for Linux. And when it comes to commercials apps, Windows is king.

So, if you play games and do some creative work on your machine, you've got no other choice than Windows (or MacOS). Unless of course there are Linux versions of all the apps you'll ever need, then Linux FTW.