Worldwide PC shipments to decline by 9.5% in 2022: Gartner

Post the sudden boom in the PC sales caused due to work and study from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the PC market is now taking a U-turn and is expected to experience the steepest decline of all device segments this year. According to the new numbers revealed by the research firm Gartner, the worldwide PC shipments are set to decline by 9.5 per cent in 2022. And the overall global shipments of total devices, including PCs, tablets and mobile phones, are on the pace to decline by 7.6 per cent in 2022.

A sharp drop in Chromebook sales significantly contributed to the overall market decline with the worldwide PC shipments totaling 77.9 million units in the first quarter of 2022.

According to the Gartner report -- titled 'Worldwide Shipment Forecast by Device Type' -- for the period 2021-22, the PC shipments were 3,42,000 units in 2021, which is expected to come down to 3,10,000 units in 2022, registering a degrowth of 9.5 per cent. Tablets, on the other hand, witnessed a 0.8 per cent decline in 2021 at 1,56,000 units. For the current year, the tablet shipments are expected to reach 1,42,000 units with a 9 per cent decline. Mobile phones, on the hand grew 5.5 per cent in 2021 with 20,65,000 units but will fall by 7.1 per cent with 14,56,000 units in 2022.

“A perfect storm of geopolitics upheaval, high inflation, currency fluctuations and supply chain disruptions have lowered business and consumer demand for devices across the world, and is set to impact the PC market the hardest in 2022,” said Ranjit Atwal, senior director analyst at Gartner.

“Consumer PC demand is on pace to decline 13.1 per cent in 2022 and will plummet much faster than business PC demand, which is expected to decline 7.2 per cent year-over-year,” Atwal added.

From a regional perspective, the EMEA PC market is forecast to record a 14 per cent decline in 2022, driven by lack of consumer PC demand. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, price increases and unavailability of products due to of lockdowns in China are significantly impacting consumer demand in the region.

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