Despite a slow fourth quarter in 2021, the global PC market saw tremendous growth over the course of the year even in the face of component shortages.
Data collected by IDC reveals that shipments of traditional PCs (these include desktops, notebooks and workstations) climbed as high as 348.8 million units worldwide throughout 2021. This represent a 14.8 percent increase in PC shipments from 2020.
As mentioned, the fourth quarter was rather slow with the market on growing 1 percent on the back of 92.7 million units.
“2021 has truly been a return to form for the PC,” says research manager for IDC’s Mobile and Consumer Device Trackers, Jitesh Ubrani.
“Consumer need for PCs in emerging markets and global commercial demand remained strong during the quarter with supply being a gating factor. While consumer and educational demand has tapered in some developed markets, we continue to believe the overall PC market has reset at a much higher level than before the pandemic,” the researcher adds.
As regards brands, Lenovo, HP Inc and Dell Technologies are the top three with Apple in a distant fourth. The top three speaks to the commercial demand for PCs throughout 2021 as employees continued to work from home.
| Top 5 Companies, Worldwide Traditional PC Shipments, Market Share, and Year-Over-Year Growth, 2021 (Preliminary results, shipments are in thousands of units) | |||||
| Company | 2021 Shipments | 2021 Market Share | 2020 Shipments | 2020 Market Share | 2021/2020 Growth |
| 1. Lenovo | 81,935 | 23.50% | 71,832 | 23.60% | 14.10% |
| 2. HP Inc. | 74,104 | 21.20% | 67,782 | 22.30% | 9.30% |
| 3. Dell Technologies | 59,303 | 17.00% | 50,297 | 16.60% | 17.90% |
| 4. Apple | 27,775 | 8.00% | 22,754 | 7.50% | 22.10% |
| 5. Acer Group | 23,906 | 6.90% | 20,977 | 6.90% | 14.00% |
| Others | 81,777 | 23.40% | 70,218 | 23.10% | 16.50% |
| Total | 348,800 | 100.00% | 303,860 | 100.00% | 14.80% |
| Source: IDC Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, January 12, 2022 | |||||
The IDC goes on to say that 2021 could have seen even more shipments had ongoing supply-side shortages and logistics not been as much of a concern.
“We closed the year with many buyers still waiting for their PC orders to ship. As we move through the first half of the year, we expect supply to remain constrained, especially with regards to the commercial segment where demand is the most robust,” concludes group vice president of IDC’s Device and Consumer Research, Tom Mainelli.
With Windows 11’s continued rollout, and a slew of new hardware being shown off at CES 2022, we’re curious to see whether there is more growth to be found in the PC market in 2022.
[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]
