Global shipments of traditional PCs, inclusive of desktops, notebooks and workstations, reached 86,7-million units during the third quarter of 2021, up 3,9% from the prior year, according to preliminary results from IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker.
This marks the sixth consecutive quarter of growth for the PC market as the onset of the pandemic has led to a surge in demand while also contributing to component shortages and other supply challenges.
“The PC industry continues to be hampered by supply and logistical challenges and, unfortunately, these issues have not seen much improvement in recent months,” says Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Mobile and Consumer Device Trackers. “Given the current circumstances, we are seeing some vendors reprioritise shipments among various markets, allowing emerging markets to maintain growth momentum while some mature markets begin to slow.”
“Bottlenecked supply chains and ongoing logistic challenges led the US PC market into its first quarter of annual shipment decline since the beginning of the pandemic,” says Neha Mahajan, senior research analyst, Devices and Displays at IDC. “After a year of accelerated buying driven by the shift to remote work and learning, there’s also been a comparative slowdown in PC spending and that has caused some softening of the US PC market today. Yet, supply clearly remains behind demand in key segments with inventory still below normal levels.”
Lenovo was the leading vendor for the quarter, followed by HP Inc, Dell, Apple, Asus, and Acer.