Inflation, global economy and market saturation are blamed for declining demand for PCs and tablets. Market researchers do not see growth again until 2024.
The global recession has also hit the markets for traditional computers and tablets. The market research company IDC predicts that sales of these devices will continue to decline not only in the course of this year, but also in 2023. Market observers only see a recovery with slight growth in PCs and tablets for 2024.
According to IDC, the reasons for the reduced prospects are inflation, the weakening global economy and the increase in sales over the past two years. The education sector and authorities have also recently stocked up sufficiently on PCs and tablets, so that no major demand is expected here.
PC market will fall by almost 13 percent in 2022
Shipments of traditional PCs, which include desktop computers, notebooks and workstations, are expected to fall by 12.8 percent from around 350 million units in 2021 to around 305 million PCs in 2022, according to the quarterly report by IDC (International Data Corporation). During the same period, shipments of tablets fell 6.8 percent to 156.8 million units.
Next year, however, the decline will not be quite as strong. For 2023, market researchers predict that the market for PCs and tablets together will fall by 2.6 percent before returning to the growth zone in 2024. Despite the poor prognosis, not everything is bad.
Signs of long-term positive prognosis
“Although demand is slowing, the prospects for deliveries remain above pre-pandemic levels,” explains one of the IDC market researchers. In addition, the IDC expects that demand will recover in the medium and long term together with the global economic situation. Businesses are also likely to replace many of their systems over the next few years as Windows 10 is phased out. Microsoft has announced end of support for Windows 10 in October 2025.
Even if the market recovers, the delivery figures will no longer reach the level of the pandemic, the market researchers went on to explain. However, it is expected that the end customer area will shift more into the premium segment, meaning that users will increasingly turn to higher-priced products.
(fds)
