News Gartner Predicts a 9.5% PC Industry Decline for 2022

[Admin]

Gartner predicts that PC shipments will be hit especially hard, due to inflation, war and supply chain disruptions.

Gartner Predicts a 9.5% PC Industry Decline for 2022 : Read more

 

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Like the downbeat predictions published by IDC three weeks ago, Gartner cites inflation, war and supply chain disruptions for the PC industry's misfortunes.

Missing the likely two biggest elephants in this room:
1- the pre-covid 6-8%/year PC decline that had already been going on for several years
2- the humongous number of people and companies that had out-of-cycle upgrades in 2020-2021 due to covid

I'm actually surprised they are only projecting a 9.5% decline. Since sales were up 15% in 2021, a return to pre-covid normal should have seen sales crash by as much as 20%. People and companies who were due to upgrade during the component shortage but couldn't must be propping up post-covid sales by ~10%.

 

[PBme]

Missing the likely two biggest elephants in this room:
1- the pre-covid 6-8%/year PC decline that had already been going on for several years
2- the humongous number of people and companies that had out-of-cycle upgrades in 2020-2021 due to covid

I'm actually surprised they are only projecting a 9.5% decline. Since sales were up 15% in 2021, a return to pre-covid normal should have seen sales crash by as much as 20%. People and companies who were due to upgrade during the component shortage but couldn't must be propping up post-covid sales by ~10%.

100% I'd be very surprised if the YOY drop isn't closer to 15+% and I can't imagine the supply chain is a significant factor in this as we'd see prices spiking if it were (as we saw in GPU market). The massive tech buying caused be all the information worker working from home artificially pulled a huge number of future purchases forward, and likely even created a number of purchases that wouldn't have been made at all.

 

[Co BIY]

People and companies who were due to upgrade during the component shortage but couldn't must be propping up post-covid sales by ~10%.

I think this is the case. Although I think some of the remote work migration is going to be permanent and will push baseline demand a little higher.

I look forward to buying in the "dip" with improved availability and some competitive pressure.

 

[InvalidError]

I think this is the case. Although I think some of the remote work migration is going to be permanent and will push baseline demand a little higher.

I wouldn't be so sure about the WFH crowd propping up sales on an on-going basis: most of the stuff that can be done from home is low-compute, low-security stuff that won't need particularly regular upgrades. A large amount of those WFH sales must have been to people who either didn't own a PC/laptop previously or simply discovered that they were grossly overdue for a refresh when they tried to use whatever they had for more than whatever personal use they had for their PC/laptop.