PC Shipments Grew 32 Percent in 1Q21

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 69.9 million units in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 32% from the first quarter of 2020, according to preliminary results by Gartner. The market rebounded from a weak first quarter of 2020 to record the fastest year-over-year growth since Gartner began tracking the PC market in 2000.

“This growth should be viewed in the context of two unique factors: comparisons against a pandemic-constrained market and the current global semiconductor shortage,“ said Mikako Kitagawa, research director at Gartner. “Without the shipment chaos in early 2020, this quarter’s growth may have been lower. However, semiconductor shortages are now adversely affecting the supply chain once again, with shipment lead times for some PCs extending to as long as four months. While this may lead to lower shipment numbers, it is still reasonable to conclude that PC demand could remain strong even after stay-home restrictions ease. Moving forward, vendors and suppliers will be closely balancing the need to meet underlying demand without creating excess inventory.“

While Gartner does not include Chromebooks in its traditional PC market results, Chromebook shipments grew by triple digits in the first quarter of 2021, compared to a year ago, with growth primarily driven by investment among educational institutions in North America. Including Chromebooks, the total worldwide PC market grew 47% year-over-year. The top three vendors remained unchanged from the previous quarter, with Lenovo maintaining the top spot by shipments ahead of HP and Dell. All of the top six vendors experienced double-digit growth, and all, except Dell, gained market share compared to a year ago.

Lenovo recorded a 42.3% year-over-year growth, the highest among the among top six vendors. In contrast to HP and Dell, Lenovo increased shipments of deskbased PCs, largely due to high demand in China. The company also appeared to be more in control of their supply chain, as a higher percentage of its PCs are manufactured in-house compared to other vendors. After two consecutive quarters of decline, HP achieved strong year-over-year growth of 34.6%. However, it should be noted that HP’s strong growth is attributed in part to a significant decline in 1Q20, as HP was the hardest hit by the supply chain disruption among of the top three vendors at the time. Dell experienced the slowest growth among the top six vendors.

The U.S. market saw strong growth of 24.1% compared to a year ago. Echoing global trends, shipments of deskbased PCs continued to decline but were offset by a robust mobile PC market, with mobile PCs showing 49% growth. The EMEA market was in line with worldwide growth trends, experiencing 30.9% year-over-year growth to 22.4 million units. The ongoing and, in some cases, increased lockdowns across multiple countries continued to fuel demand for notebooks and Chromebooks to support remote learning and consumer entertainment. The Asia Pacific market saw strong double-digit growth (37.6%). While this figure is partially inflated due to a weak first quarter of 2020, healthy consumer demand and a rebound in desktops from business demands contributed to a strong market. In China specifically, the PC market experienced particularly high growth of 70% year-over-year.