The PC market has taken full advantage of the health crisis. Sales are progressing and manufacturers are finding new ambitions.
The new technology industry was hit hard by the Covid in 2020. The health crisis has shaken up the plans of many sectors and benefited computer manufacturers.
Teleworking has boosted sales of personal computers (and tablets) and is allowing an entire market to recover after several difficult years.
According to a Canalys report on the outlook for the personal PC market, the global market is expected to grow by 35% in the fourth quarter of 2020, confirming an exceptional year for this sector.
Shipments of computers (desktop, laptop and tablet) are expected to reach 143 million units in the last three months of the year, bringing the total to 458 million units for all of 2020.
The health crisis will have allowed an increase of about 17% of shipments compared to the previous year.
According to Reuters , the market has returned to figures never seen since the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
Containment around the world has pushed users to equip themselves to work from their homes, play video games from their PCs or buy devices such as laptops or tablets to take advantage of streaming platforms.
For manufacturers, this growth should continue at least until 2021. However, the pace should drop again as shipments should increase by 1.4% over the year as a whole.
As the Canalys firm notes , this figure is encouraging as this sector has had an “extraordinary” year . 2020 was notably marked by Apple’s decision to turn away from Intel to integrate its own chips into its computers.
Four trends will boost PC sales in 2021
“While the global pandemic has given a huge boost to short-term demand, the PC industry still has a lot to look forward to in the years to come. At Canalys, we have identified four key trends that will drive the growth of the PC market in 2021 and beyond: remote working, digital learning, device as a service and new use cases , ” explains Rushabh Doshi, director of research at Canalys.
We also learn that the arrival of vaccines should lead to “changes in the behavior of companies and users” .
These will “put more emphasis on the use of PCs, which will lead to a host of new possibilities not only in hardware, but also in software and services . “