PC shipments in 2020 saw highest growth in ten years

[midian182]

In a nutshell: Reports from market research giants IDC, Canalys, and Gartner show that the PC market was one of several industries to have benefitted from the pandemic, with sales increasing YoY in both the fourth quarter and in 2020 as a whole.

All three firms agree that the global PC market grew last year compared to 2019. Canalys reports 297 million shipments, with an annual growth of 11.9 percent; IDC places the figure at 302 million shipments, making a 13.1 percent increase; and Gartner believes it was 275 million shipments—just under five percent growth. All of which represent the market’s highest increase in ten years.

The YoY differences are even more significant when looking at Q4 2020: IDC has 91.5 million shipments (+26.1 percent), Canalys claims 90.2 million (+25.4 percent), while Gartner is at 79.3 million (+10.7 percent).

The closure of businesses such as cinemas combined with lockdown restrictions and home working saw a sharp rise in demand for tech during 2020. Gaming, office hardware, TV sales, and streaming services experienced explosive growth throughout the last 12 months. Interestingly, Canalys notes that laptops made up most growth in the PC market for the year, while desktop shipments decreased.

When it comes to individual companies, all three research firms have the same top five. Lenovo took the number one spot, followed by HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer—Gartner also has a sixth spot occupied by Asus.

“Robust consumer PC demand again drove sales, particularly in regions where governments maintain stay-at-home orders as the COVID-19 pandemic persists. Prior to 2020, consumers had been shifting to a phone-first focus, yet the pandemic reversed this trend,” said Mikako Kitagawa, research director at Gartner.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/88250-pc-shipments-2020-saw-highest-growth-ten-years.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Covid-19 kept people home obviously.

I dropped a lot of money in my PC (3090 and 8TB SSD) because of games.

Hopefully ya'll bought stock in the actual companies (logitech, AMD, Microsoft, Apple, etc).

 

[VitalyT]

I think this has also created a serious dent in Apple's plans for ARM, and in fact generally for ARM, because as people work more and more from home, they just want more power from their computer, and care less about power efficiency or mobility. This also further increases demand for AMD's 5000 CPU-s.

I mean, who's here shopping for a premium laptop today, really?

I dropped a lot of money in my PC (3090 and 8TB SSD) because of games.

Hopefully ya'll bought stock in the actual companies (logitech, AMD, Microsoft, Apple, etc).

I don't know any sane market playa who would be dropping money on a gaming rig for himself. It sounds almost like a contradiction. Those people buy serious productivity machines, with 3-6 monitors usually.

 

[Uncle Al]

You mean all those people that continue to tell us "the PC is dead" were wrong? LOL

 

[QuantumPhysics]

You mean all those people that continue to tell us "the PC is dead" were wrong? LOL

Until Someone makes a Tablet with 1:1 performance with a 10900K and a 3090, the PC will NEVER die.

 

[Uncle Al]

Until Someone makes a Tablet with 1:1 performance with a 10900K and a 3090, the PC will NEVER die.

LOL .... well said

 

[fireworksordie]

"No prizes for guessing why" - thanks for the good laugh

 

[Mister_K]

Until Someone makes a Tablet with 1:1 performance with a 10900K and a 3090, the PC will NEVER die.

That's the thing, as demand for smaller more powerful machines increases, so does the need to drive heavy 3D applications and future "AR/VR" machines for entertainment. Power consumption for high-end rigs is only increasing and slowly hitting that base 1000Ws. Oh and they you have hobbyists, which a lot of PC gamers are (the ones who custom rig).

The new flex isn't how many cores, GHz or RAM you got but "show me how big is your PSU bruh". True metric is wattage consumption.

Off-topic:
I wonder whether we are going to be a race of species which try and be as efficient as possible running machines of 1Nw/h or keep increasing and needing 100Pw/h to game. (ignore my orders dont ****in know them)...

 

[3volv3d]

You mean all those people that continue to tell us "the PC is dead" were wrong? LOL

PCs are the bar. Everything else aims for it.
And pc sales will fluctuate. If pc sales were high 5 years ago expect them to be high this year.
You can't really future proof a PC. Everything changes way too fast. More so these days. And they change standards of parts so that one part makes 3 others obsolete.
And sometimes as with WiFi they are absolute c**k wombles.
Bring out a new standard. Not define it. Release parts. Release the standard. Release parts that comply. People may pay again to get what they thought they night prior.
I can imagine like with streaming games to other devices, people in the future will still have a power house pc that connects their virtual glasses, heads-up displays, Google glasses on meth.
People will only interface with them for AAAAAA+ titles and when it needs rebooting due to a power cut cause Timmy the kitty pissed on the power outlet.

 

[Markoni35]

Yet another industry that profited from COVID. Aside from pharmaceuticals, banksters, inner-circle stock market traders, and everyone else with shitload of money buying things cheaply right now. And democratic party of course. It's those damn bats. They deliberately spread the virus to humans after they placed bets that airline stocks will plummet.

 

[koblongata]

Apart from the obvious I think it's that consoles are less attractive than they used to be really.