The global market for PCs — which includes desktops, notebooks and workstations — declined 9.8% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2020 despite an increase in stay at home workers due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, according to new research from International Data Corp (IDC).
The decline was the result of reduced supply due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, the world’s largest supplier of PCs. The extended closure of factories in February and the slow resumption of manufacturing with difficulties in logistics and labor toward the end of the quarter led to a reduction of supply. However, demand rose during the quarter as employees needed to upgrade their PCs to work from home and consumers sought gaming PCs to keep themselves entertained.
"Though supply of new PCs was somewhat limited during the quarter, a few vendors and retailers were able to keep up with the additional demand as the threat of increased tariffs last year led to some inventory stockpiling at the end of 2019," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobile Device Trackers. "However, this bump in demand may be short lived as many fear the worst is yet to come and this could lead to both consumers and businesses tightening spending in the coming months."
However, IDC said when the dust settles on COVID-19-impacted businesses that once kept their users on campus will have to invest more in remote infrastructure. Consumers stuck at home will have to keep tech up to date and will provide a steady, long-range tailwind for PC and monitor markets.
During the first quarter, Lenovo was the leading supplier but declined 4.3% and HP finished second but declined 13.8%. Dell came in third and managed to grow during the quarter 1.1% year-over-year. Acer was in fourth place rising in the ranks on the success of its Chromebook market. Apple saw its Mac volumes decline by 20.7% year-over-year, one of the largest drops in recent history as most of its manufacturing is based in China and was hard hit by the shutdown of factories due to coronavirus.
To find out more information about IDC’s findings in the PC market, see its Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker.
