IT Trends

Surge in Demand Drives Traditional PCs Up Worldwide While Shortages Lead to Decline in the U.S.

• By David Nagel
• 10/21/21

Traditional PCs are continuing to see growth worldwide despite bottlenecks in the supply chain. However, according to a new report from market research firm IDC, in the United States, traditional PCs saw their first quarterly decline since the beginning of the pandemic. Traditional PCs include desktops, notebooks and workstations.

"Bottlenecked supply chains and ongoing logistic challenges led the U.S. PC market into its first quarter of annual shipment decline since the beginning of the pandemic," said Neha Mahajan, senior research analyst, Devices and Displays at IDC, in a prepared statement. "After a year of accelerated buying driven by the shift to remote work and learning, there’s also been a comparative slowdown in PC spending and that has caused some softening of the U.S. PC market today. Yet, supply clearly remains behind demand in key segments with inventory still below normal levels."

Interestingly, according to IDC, vendors witched their "shipping priorities" during the quarter, sending units to emerging markets where growth is strong and holding back in markets (countries) with slower growth.

Globally, traditional PCs grew by 3.9% in the third quarter of 2021 compared with the same quarter last year. Total shipments reached 86.7 million units.

The top manufacturer in the third quarter worldwide was Lenovo, which grew 3.1% year over year to capture 22.8% of the overall traditional PC market. Lenovo shipped more than 19.77 million units in Q3.

No. 2 HP was the only maker in the top 5 to see a decline in the third quarter (–5.8%) but still captured 20.3% of the overall market with 17.6 million units shipped.

No. 3 Dell saw the highest growth and market share gains of the top PC manufacturers, climbing 26.6% to nearly 15.2 million units in the third quarter. Dell's market share increased from 14.4% in Q3 2020 to 17.5% in Q3 2021.

Apple, in fourth place, saw the second-best growth among the top manufacturers, climbing 9.9% on shipments of 7.65 million units. Aside from Dell, Apple was the only other manufacturer to gain market share, coming in at 8.8% of the market — up exactly half a point from Q3 2020.

IDC called the No. 5 slot a tie between ASUS and Acer Group. ASUS grew 3.6% on shipments of 6 million units. Acer grew 1.4% on shipments of slightly more than 5.98 million units.

All other manufacturers combined lost 2.8% on shipments of 14.44 million units.