News PC Market to Decline Steeply in 2022, Will Rebound in 2024: IDC

[Admin]

PC unit shipments heading south and will not rebound to pandemic levels any time soon.

PC Market to Decline Steeply in 2022, Will Rebound in 2024: IDC : Read more

 

[InvalidError]

Analysts predicting PC growth are ignoring 10+ years of steadily declining sales prior to COVID. The massive demand surge prompted by COVID in 2020-2021 is people and companies with long-overdue upgrades pulling the trigger on top of regular corporate and institutional fleet refreshes. Most of the people and companies who contributed to the demand spike likely have upgrade cycles much longer than the steady 3-4 years corporate and institutional baseline demand and won't be back on the market for a new PC or laptop within the next 5-7 years.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Analysts predicting PC growth are ignoring 10+ years of steadily declining sales prior to COVID. The massive demand surge prompted by COVID in 2020-2021 is people and companies with long-overdue upgrades pulling the trigger on top of regular corporate and institutional fleet refreshes. Most of the people and companies who contributed to the demand spike likely have upgrade cycles much longer than the steady 3-4 years corporate and institutional baseline demand and won't be back on the market for a new PC or laptop within the next 5-7 years.

But if crypto takes off again the industry could see some growth again. I purchased a prebuilt because I needed to upgrade my gaming PC and there were no GPU's available. If crypto comes back strong it could make PC buyers to just buy a prebuilt PC.

 

[10tacle]

Well there's that and the fact that PC gaming is mostly on the GPU these days so people can skip many generations of CPU chipsets and just buy say every 2nd or 3rd generation of GPU - especially in higher resolutions and quality settings. An i7-8700K can run an RTX-3080 nearly just as well as an i7-12700K at 4K gaming resolution minus a minute FPS loss, but an RTX 1080 can't come close to a 3080 (or even a 3070 or 3060 Ti) as one example .

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Hopefully the Tom's article turns out to be true. IIRC, the RTX 4070 is supposed to hit similar performance to the 3090.

 

[escksu]

COVID fuelled massive growth in PC market in 2020/2021. Of course we will be getting quiet times after that... It's normal.

 

[InvalidError]

COVID fuelled massive growth in PC market in 2020/2021. Of course we will be getting quiet times after that... It's normal.

If we go by display resolutions on the Steam survey, a shocking number of people appear to still be running on 10+ years old potatoes and I bet a fair chunk of COVID upgrades were people previously using such potatoes. Yeah, not going to score repeat sales from those people any time soon and I can count myself among those, going from an i5-3470 to an i5-11400.

 

[KE=MV2]

In other words...
Under Brandon the economy, inflation, (i.e. people's available income), and everything else just sucks.
Once Brandon is gone in 2024, we can begin to recover, and hopefully people & companies can afford to update their equipment.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

If we go by display resolutions on the Steam survey, a shocking number of people appear to still be running on 10+ years old potatoes and I bet a fair chunk of COVID upgrades were people previously using such potatoes. Yeah, not going to score repeat sales from those people any time soon and I can count myself among those, going from an i5-3470 to an i5-11400.

I'm definitely in that group as well. I went from an i7-3770K and RTX 780 which I built in 2013 to a 10900K, RTX 3080 back in 2021.

 

[bit_user]

the economy, inflation, (i.e. people's available income), and everything else just sucks.

The job market is currently very strong, which means some people are making more money. That's probably among the factors fueling inflation.

Also, in spite of the recent beating the stock market has taken, the Dow and S&P 500 are still higher than they were in mid-January, 2021. So, you can focus on everything that's going poorly, but it's certainly not all bad.

And most of the factors hitting the US economy are actually world-wide (e.g. shipping costs & supply chain issues). In fact, the US is actually doing better in several key areas, compared to most other countries, including energy & food prices. Even inflation isn't as bad in the US as in many other countries. I think that's a positive story, but people don't like to hear "it's even worse, elsewhere", when they're upset about something.

in 2024, we can begin to recover

It might interest you to know that 2024 is an election year, but the new administration doesn't take over until January 2025. Specifically, the inauguration happens on January 20th and the Congress usually begins a new session on January 3rd.