PC Market Growth Slows Amid Global Chip Shortages

The PC market is showing early signs of its growth slowing down, after an impressive run of shipments throughout 2020. From a report: Both IDC and Gartner conclude that growth in the second quarter of PC shipments has slowed this year. Demand for new PCs is still above what we saw before the pandemic hit, but a mixture of softer demand and the effects of the global chip shortage mean it's not growing as quickly. "The market faces mixed signals as far as demand is concerned," says Neha Mahajan, a senior research analyst at IDC. "With businesses opening back up, demand potential in the commercial segment appears promising. However, there are also early indicators of consumer demand slowing down as people shift spending priorities after nearly a year of aggressive PC buying." IDC says more than 83 million PCs were shipped in the second quarter of 2021, while Gartner's own figure is more than 71 million. Gartner does not include Chromebook shipments in its results, but the research firm says "Chromebook shipments were once again strong in the second quarter of 2021." Either way, both firms agree that year-over-year growth in this latest quarter wasn't as strong as 2020's sudden growth.

Everyone is buying big box pc's....

[GimpOnTheGo]

...to rip the graphics cards out of them.

Thanks Bitcoin et al.

Money grows on trees.

[Ostracus]

Well there's a little matter of having enough money to keep this growth going.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Well there's a little matter of having enough money to keep this growth going.

There is plenty of money sloshing around.

Congress is getting ready to throw another $3.5T onto the pile.

Re:

[ChunderDownunder]

Economic stimulus combined with TPM 2.0 "Windows 11 ready" laptops will equal a boon for Linux users.

My local 2nd hand retailer says they have the highest levels of stock since pre-pandemic as people return to something approaching normal life* and abandon their working-from-home gear. Not many Thinkpads but Core i5 Latitudes upgradeable to 16GB RAM.

* Touch wood, here Melbourne is expected to return to hard lockdown within 48 hours.

Delays

[Scutter]

I'm now having to plan my laptop purchases 18 months out to ensure I have enough in-house stock to meet company needs. Demand at my company has not lessened, it's only grown. I just can't get the equipment in anything like a timely manner. Orders are taking up to 3-4 months in some cases. I've had to repeatedly inform department heads that they need to allow enough lead time to procure equipment, that they can't just call up the day a new hire starts and expect to have a brand new laptop on their desk an hour later.

I realize my story is anecdotal, but for me, it's all chip-shortage.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

By buying preemptively, you are compounding the problem.

Re:

[jabuzz]

No. According to the account given he does not have a large stock of laptops sitting in a cupboard waiting to be handed out. Placing orders for something you are going to use when you get it is just normal business planning. The issue now is rather than placing that order today and getting it delivered within a few days it's taking months.

Put another way if I need 100 new laptops a year for my business it does not exacerbate the shortage if I order them a day in advance or a month in advance, because I am s

Re:

[Scutter]

I'm not buying preemptively. I'm buying enough stock to fulfill current needs. I just have to plan it out 18 months in advance because I can't just pull a laptop out of thin air at a moment's notice anymore. I rarely, if ever, have extra laptops lying around "just in case".

I'm confused

[Tokolosh]

Are fewer chips being manufactured than before? Have factories become slower/less efficient/shut down?

Re:

[labnet]

Its a good question.
The problems are as follows
-COVID19 caused some supply chain interruption thus loss of capacity
-Work from home increased demand for PC's and monitors
-Car manufacturers misread the 'dip' and were caught short
-Demand from electric cars
-Trump started a trade war causing Chinese companies to hoard chips.
-Electronic manufacturers started panic buying

Think of it like toilet paper for electronics!
In fact, this happened with multi-layer capacitors about 3 years ago. Global shortages. Panic buyin

Re:

[exomondo]

There's also the crypto mining surge that contributed to the GPU shortage. Nvidia and AMD are selling more GPUs than ever before, it's just the demand for them is also more than ever before and is outstripping supply to the point where the fabs that these companies rely on don't have the capacity to service them.

Re:

[Tokolosh]

Covid supply chain interruption I understand, although surely that is in the past by now.

As to your other points, increased demand has nothing to do with slower growth.

Re:

[parityshrimp]

Oh, I mostly just find the people who follow him around to be an interesting social phenomenon.

Is it though?

[Bodie1]

Sure absolute numbers are down, but how does it compare when normalized to product availability?