The PC market is in an interesting place right now, as the pandemic leads to a surge in demand, while component shortages and supply chain issues hamper its natural growth.
Global shipment of PCs — which includes desktops, notebooks and workstations — jumped 3.9 per cent year-on-year to hit 86.7 million units in the third quarter of 2021.
This is according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, and marks the sixth consecutive quarter of growth for the PC market.
“The PC industry continues to be hampered by supply and logistical challenges and unfortunately these issues have not seen much improvement in recent months,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Mobile and Consumer Device Trackers.
“Given the current circumstances, we are seeing some vendors reprioritise shipments amongst various markets, allowing emerging markets to maintain growth momentum while some mature markets begin to slow.”
“Bottlenecked supply chains and ongoing logistic challenges led the U.S. PC market into its first quarter of annual shipment decline since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Neha Mahajan, senior research analyst, Devices and Displays at IDC.
“After a year of accelerated buying driven by the shift to remote work and learning, there’s also been a comparative slowdown in PC spending and that has caused some softening of the U.S. PC market today.
“Yet, supply clearly remains behind demand in key segments with inventory still below normal levels.”
