You’d think PC sales dropped worldwide last year amid chip shortages…
But you’d be wrong, as the leading global technology analyst firm Canalys reports that PC shipments grew 15% in 2021 against the previous year, with a whopping 341 million units sold.
According to Canalys 2021 was the best year for PC sales since 2012.
Canalys senior analyst Ishan Dutt said. “PCs had a momentous year in spite of chip supply issues, and he sees PCs as firmly entrenched as part of our work and leisure lives, with it becoming the norm to have multiple PCs in the same home in developed areas of the world.”
“For the market to post double-digit growth over an impressive 2020, despite the constant cloud of supply constraints, speaks volumes about how strong PC demand has been over the last 12 months. Taking a long-term view, the most important developments in 2021 were the large increases in PC penetration and usage rates,” Dutt continued.
The big winners in 2021 were Lenovo, HP, and Dell, with Apple coming in fourth.
It’s worth noting that while everyone had a good year, as the chart below shows, Apple had the largest growth number year-over-year at 28.3%, while Acer was second with 21.8% growth.
Although chip shortages are expected to persist in the first quarter of the year. Canalys still believes that 2022 will be a strong year for PC sales. Canalys analyst Rushabh Doshi said. “The market would likely have been bigger in 2021 if not for the supply issues.”
“The primary reason we’re in a shortage situation is that demand is outstripping supply. It’s true had the supply situation been better, the PC industry would have grown faster.” Doshi confirmed when speaking to Ron Millar (TechCrunch)
Doshi sees a market that will continue to expand into the future. “Looking at an unconstrained view, the demand for better and faster PCs is now more pronounced than ever, not just in work, but also at home. With the importance of PCs reinforced in the past two years, we believe that the growth is here to stay,”
To be honest we don’t much sell new PC’s (including laptops), we focus more on refurbished equipment, as it’s fit for most people’s purpose and still comes with a 12-month warranty.
We believe the pandemic has been a contributing factor into the double-digit growth during 2021, where organisations had people working from home and families were home schooling.
Just like Canalys have reported for new PCs, we’ve seen huge demand for refurbished PCs and Laptops during 2021, which has continued into the new year too.
Interestingly demand has increased most for our PC / Laptop subscription service, which provides the machine bundled with Office 365 and lifetime warranty for an affordable fixed monthly fee.
…everything’s covered with no strings attached, it’s just simple honest service.
