FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Octo­ber 12, 2020 – As the glo­bal pan­de­mic rages on and many count­ries around the world enter the second wave of COVID-19 infec­tions, con­ti­nui­ty of busi­ness and online schoo­ling remain at the fore­front of every eco­no­my. This led to dou­ble-digit growth in the tra­di­tio­nal PC mar­ket, com­pri­sed of desk­tops, note­books, and work­sta­tions, as glo­bal ship­ments grew 14.6% year over year to 81.3 mil­li­on units in the third quar­ter of 2020 (3Q20), accor­ding to preli­mi­na­ry results from the Inter­na­tio­nal Data Cor­po­ra­ti­on (IDC) World­wi­de Quar­ter­ly Per­so­nal Com­pu­ting Device Tra­cker.

“Con­su­mer demand and insti­tu­tio­nal demand approa­ched record levels in some cases,” said Jitesh Ubra­ni rese­arch mana­ger for IDC’s Mobi­le Device Tra­ckers. “Gam­ing, Chrome­books, and in some cases cel­lu­lar-enab­led note­books were all bright spots during the quar­ter. Had the mar­ket not been ham­pe­red by com­po­nent shorta­ges, note­book ship­ments would have soared even hig­her during the third quar­ter as mar­ket appe­ti­te was yet unsatiated.”

Unfort­u­na­te­ly, shorta­ges of mul­ti­ple com­pon­ents, such as pro­ces­sors, panels, and other sub­com­pon­ents, led to missed oppor­tu­ni­ty for many ven­dors. “The PC indus­try rode into the third quar­ter with a sizeable back­log of unful­fil­led orders,” said Linn Huang, rese­arch vice pre­si­dent, Devices and Dis­plays at IDC. “And it appears the quar­ter will end under the same auspi­ces. Given that the shorta­ges have been due more to a short­fall of busi­ness plan­ning than a tech­ni­cal glitch, we do not anti­ci­pa­te a sud­den sur­ge in capa­ci­ty. Con­se­quent­ly, this back­log will likely car­ry into 2021.” (…) Wei­ter­le­sen »