PC shipments strengthened in Q1 2021 despite chip shortage: IDC report

Global shipment of personal computers and laptops strengthened in the first quarter of 2021 despite a growing chip shortage, says a new report by the International Data Corporation (IDC). The report says that global shipments of personal computers, including desktops, notebooks, and workstations, grew by 55.2% year-over-year during Q1 21.

The report also says that while PCs remain in extremely high demand, the growth rate benefitted from the shortages faced in the first quarter of 2020 when the global pandemic began, resulting in an unusually favourable year-over-year comparison. The report also says that PC shipments reached 84 million worldwide in the first quarter of the year. IDC’s analysis showed a modest decline of eight perfect from the fourth quarter of 2020.

The reason for this trend, as the report points out is, the continued resurgence in the PC market, increases in average selling prices, growth in gaming, the need for higher performance notebooks in the enterprise, and an increase in demand for touchscreens within the education segment.

As far as the top PC vendors are concerned, Lenovo led the bandwagon with 20,401 units being sold in Q1 2021 that represented 24.3% of the total market share. The company had sold 12,826 units in Q1 2020. The second spot was occupied by HP that sold 19,237 PC units in Q1 2021 and captured 22.9% of the market share. The third spot was occupied by Dell Technologies with 12,946 units of PCs being sold in Q1 2021. The company captured 15.4% of the market share.

The fourth spot was captured by Apple, which sold 6,692 units of PCs and captured 8.0% of the market share. The fifth spot was captured by Acer, which sold 5,837 units of PCs and captured 7.0% of the market share.