PC Sales Top 91 Million In Last 2020 Quarter
PC sales continued to surge in the last quarter of 2020, with global shipments of desktops, notebooks, and workstations hitting 91.6 million units.
Shipments grew 26.1 per cent year on year for the fourth quarter of 2020, making a total of 13.1 per cent year on year growth for the 2020 calendar year, according to research from IDC.
Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, said the pandemic-driven boom still has a long way to go.
“The obvious drivers for last year’s growth centred around work from home and remote learning needs, but the strength of the consumer market should not be overlooked.
“We continue to see gaming PCs and monitor sales at all-time highs and Chrome-based devices are expanding beyond education into the consumer market. In retrospect, the pandemic not only fuelled PC market demand but also created opportunities that resulted in a market expansion,” he said.
Lenovo topped the charts for traditional PC shipments – which exclude tablets and x86 servers – in both the fourth quarter and 2020 calendar year, followed by HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer. According to Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Mobile Device Trackers, demand continued to outstrip production over the quarter, stretching supply chains to their limits.
“Not only were PC makers and ODMs dealing with component and production capacity shortages, but logistics remained an issue as vendors were forced to resort to air freight, upping costs at the expense of reducing delivery times,” said Ubrani.
The year-on-year growth in 2020 was the largest in a decade, just under the 13.7 per cent high point in 2010.