News

PCs: Gartner predicts 9.5% drop in sales for 2022

The forecast numbers for the PC market this year are not encouraging. According to a Gartner survey, the expectation is for a drop of 9.5% by the end of 2022 – a stark difference compared to the 11% growth in 2021.

Specifically when analyzing sales to the final consumer, the impact will be greater: 13.5%. As for the business PC market, the decline should be 7.2% year on year.

When looking at the cut of different regions, the market that encompasses Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) will be one of the most impacted, with a reduction of 14%.

According to Gartner, the main driver is the uncertainty caused by conflicts in the region, as well as price increases and product unavailability – not to mention the constant lockdowns that have taken place in China and which have also had a huge impact on consumer demand.

PCs are not the only ones: tablets and smartphones also suffer

Despite computer sales being the hardest hit according to the survey, tablets and smartphones will also be impacted, recording a predicted drop of 9% and 7.1%, respectively. Estimates also point to a general retraction (counting all devices) of 7.6%.

Image: Josep Suria/Shutterstock

In terms of devices, Chromebooks are the most affected. According to Ranjit Atwal, a senior analyst at Gartner, who points out the slowdown in purchases in the education sector as the cause of this drop.

The expert explains that, with the pandemic, a lot of equipment was acquired to meet the needs of schools and the demand for online education. “The expectation was that this could continue, but it didn’t,” he says, in an interview with The Register.

Estimates pointed to a drop only in 2023, but this was anticipated with the sharp slowdown in purchases by consumers.

Atwal said that there is “a general apprehension about what we do going forward, and this apprehension usually translates into budget restrictions”, points out the analyst, adding that in addition to the pandemic, concerns were generated mainly due to inflationary pressures and of the crisis resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Not even 5G saves

Not even 5G saved smartphones from the slump: “At the beginning of the year, Greater China’s 5G cellular market was expected to show double-digit growth,” Atwal said, but “the impact of the zero-tolerance policy against Covid -19 in China and the ensuing lockdowns have dramatically reversed that trend.”

In other words, what was supposed to be a big boost turned into cost containment and consumers, who should have invested their money in new devices, simply chose to stop buying non-essential items – and, of course, 5G smartphones were included in that list.

The growth expectation for smartphones was therefore revised, being readjusted from 47% at the beginning of the year to an estimated 29%.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *