The invasion of the Ukraine by Russia has established a context of high inflation that is translating into a decrease in consumption. After the COVID-19 pandemic pushed up PC sales, market analyst IDC He is now pessimistic about a year 2023 that is just around the corner.
IDC has estimated that PC shipments will fall 12.8% to stand at about 305.3 million units in total by 2022, while in regard to tablets, the decrease would be approximately 6.8% to reach an amount of 156.8 million. The company has estimated that the combined market for tablets and PCs (desktops, laptops and workstations) will experience another 2.6 percent drop in 2023 to then start to go back in 2024.
The analytics firm calculated in July that global shipments fell 15.3% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2022, to a total of 71.3 million units. IDC acknowledged that the data ended up being worse than what it had forecast.
IDC has attributed the decline in shipments in 2022 to the aforementioned inflation, the weakening of the world economy and the increase in sales experienced in previous years, so, apart from some pockets punished by inflation, there would now be a significant percentage of users who do not have the need to buy a new computer. The education sector now sees no reason to continue buying equipment and companies have reduced their demand due to the current macroeconomic context, which is not expected to improve in the coming months.
Linn Huang, research vice president for devices and displays at IDC, has commented that an economic recovery in time for the next big refresh cycle could boost growth, but that the peaks seen in the pandemic would hardly be reached, although current levels remain. being above the pre-pandemic era. In addition, they expect the market to revolve more around premium products, which tend to be more geared towards professionals and gamers.
As we have already said, IDC hopes that the situation will begin to soar in 2024 with total shipments of 477.7 million unitsof which 269.3 million would be hoarded by final consumers, 63.6 million by the business sector, 75.9 million by small and medium-sized companies and 69 million by the public sector.
Another factor that motivates IDC’s relative optimism is the end of the cycle of Windows 10, which in its Home and Pro versions is scheduled for the year 2025. This, together with the high requirements of Windows 11, will force the renewal of many computers in companies and institutions for support and security issues, if they don’t want to risk it with a migration to Linux or ChromeOS Flex.
IDC’s calculations and projections are in line with others published recently by Canalys, which estimated a year-on-year drop of 18% in the second quarter of 2022 for the reasons stated, and that is that in a context of economic crisis in which the As inflation rises worryingly, people prefer to have the money they can save in their pocket.
