With a perfect storm of economic upheaval, the war in Ukraine, and supply chain woes, Gartner predicts global PC sales could drop nearly 10% this year. But not all misfortunes can be attributed solely to these external conditions.
Ranjit Atwal, principal managing analyst at Gartner, who helped author the report, says there are other factors at play here as well. “I was expecting the consumer forecast to go down anyway this year, and the consumer forecast going into the year was already negative. And a lot of that was based on the fact that so many consumers bought PCs through 2020 and 2021,” he said.
He says when you combine that with these other conditions, it leads to this inevitable decline this year. “All of that has gone up dramatically because of what’s going on with total discretionary spending, inflation, prices and everything else. So while you know there’s no doubt that there will be fewer people buying anyway, there will also be some who put off buying for other reasons.
Picture credits: Gartner
After shipping 342,000 units last year, up 11% year-over-year, the company expects just 310,000 units for this year, down 9.5%. This number is for PCs only, which includes Windows PCs, Chromebooks, and Macs.
Chromebooks are expected to be hit the hardest, with Gartner predicting they will be down 30% this year, compared to 3% for PCs with Macs expected to be stable.
Some parts of the world are also going to be hit harder than others, with double-digit declines expected in Eastern Europe and China.
The report also looked at tablets, with those numbers expected to drop 9.5%, while phone shipments are expected to drop 7.1%, with the three categories total down 7.6% in 2022.
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