"The dramatic revival of the dead PC market", The cause is the Corona 19 pandemic

With the pandemic crisis caused by Corona 19 as an opportunity, analysts all reported that the PC market grew rapidly last year, recording the highest growth rate in 10 years.

IDC estimates that the global PC shipments in 2020 will increase by 13% compared to the previous year to 3,260 units, forecasting the largest annual profit since 2010. Gitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's mobile device tracker team, said in an interview that shipments have reached the highest level since 2014.

This rebound is surprising. For six of the past ten years, the PC market's year-on-year growth rate continued to decline, and even if the growth rate was the same, it was only one year.

Gartner Research also noted record growth in PC shipments. Gartner's 2020 estimate was less than 5%, more than half lower than IDC's, but the two companies agreed that 2020 is the year with the highest growth rate since 2010.

The difference between IDC and Gartner's 2020 PC shipments was 322 million and 275 million units, respectively. IDC included Chromebooks in the PC segment, and Gartner did not.

Ubrani analyzed that "the large shipments in early 2020 are due to the rapid increase in the number of workers from home." In the spring of last year, when the world first experienced the pandemic crisis caused by Corona 19, it started demanding employees to work from home. He explained that employees who were suddenly placed in remote working environments bought a large number of laptops, and the surge in supply chains caused tension in the supply chain.

As front-line schools shifted to online learning at home, demand for PCs rapidly increased, centering on low-cost, entry-level notebooks. Ubrani mentioned the change in the PC-to-student ratio, "The education site also did not have a one-to-one device, and several students were used to the environment where they rotated on a single notebook.

The third factor is that families with children of the school-age population are rapidly starting to acquire PCs.

Ubrani pointed out the change in the environment that requires one PC per child and the increase in demand for game-oriented PCs in the home. As the self-isolation and lockdown caused by Corona 19 around the world have sprung up, demand for entertainment has risen at home, and spending on game titles as well as PCs for gaming equipment has increased.

Ubrani analyzed that in the past nine months, individual users rediscovered PCs. "Individual users who haven't bought a new PC for several years have found that their old PCs aren't suitable for many projects, such as games and content creation, and they think they need a new PC. He added.

The PC market has grown largely thanks to bad news from other economic sectors. According to Ubrani, the expenses used by front-line families for entertainment and leisure outside the home, such as travel and eating out, have found new applications.

In fact, Ubrani predicted that the PC market for general users will gradually recover after 10 years even in the past, when many people, including several authors of Computerworld, predicted that PCs would lose their purpose due to being pushed by smartphones and tablets. Ubrani interpreted the rebound as meaning that the average user redesigned and reconsidered the importance of the PC.

Macs and Chromebooks are on the rise, shipments surge 80%

Meanwhile, IDC announced that major PC variants such as Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer recorded the largest shipments in 2020. Gartner also announced the same preliminary estimates as IDC, but the year-end statistics were different, but the ranking of shipments by the supplier was the same.

Apple was among the top five companies with the highest growth rates year-on-year in 2020. It increased by 29% according to IDC data and 23% according to Gart estimates. Apple shipments this year announced by the two companies are 23.10 million units and 22.5 million units, respectively.

Analysts analyzed that the Chromebook segment powered by ChromeOS, a Google Chrome browser-based operating system, also grew significantly in 2020.

Gartner said the shipment of Chromebooks in the December 2020 quarter was 11.7 million units, up 200% from the previous year. Chromebook shipments over the past year have increased by 80 percent to nearly 30 million units.

IDC recorded 19.6 million Chromebook shipments through the quarter of September 2020. Ubrani said the figures for the December 2020 quarter are currently being compiled.

“It can be seen that increasing demand is accelerating the growth of the PC market, and there is plenty of room for growth in the future,” said Ryan Race, head of IDC's mobile device tracker group. Looking back in 2020, it has created a great opportunity for the PC market demand and market expansion, which is the Corona 19 pandemic.”

Ubrani agrees and expects that shipments for business will decline slightly in 2021, but predicts that shipments for personal PCs will increase rapidly by 2024. Ubrani predicted that "in 2021, there will still be significant growth as demand remains unmet last year, and orders delayed from the end of 2020 will be shipped in early 2021."