Rising meteorically by 13%, 2020 was the year that PC shipments kicked into high gear. The surge in remote working and online learning meant that if you did not have a computer, you were missing out on everything.
The worldwide shipments were recorded as 91.6 million units, in just the fourth quarter of last year. The IDC’s research has records on the latest quarterly tracker, showing a 26% increase from the previous year’s fourth quarter.
Taking into account the whole year, PC shipments reached 302.6 million units, a 13% growth from 2019.
Lenovo still leads
In IDC’s definition of PC markets, they include desktops, notebooks, and workstations, excluding tablets and x86 Servers.
The top three vendors in the market are the same as the previous year, with Lenovo taking the crown with a 25.2% market share. HP and Dell are second and third, with Apple and Acer making spots 4 and 5 respectfully.
When Lenovo showed its Q2 results on November 3, the company revealed that Chromebooks were in demand, with rising average prices. The company expects that the trend will continue, as the 5G Chromebooks come into the market. HP’s notebooks revenue jumped by 18% in its fourth quarter.
2020 had a good run
Ryan Reith, the program VP at IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, says that demand is pushing the PC market forward, and he doesn’t expect that trend to break anytime soon. The driver for 2020’s growth was that the need for remote working and online learning spiked.
The gaming PCs and monitor sales are at an all-time high and Chrome-based devices are already going beyond education users and into the consumer market.
Gartner also released a report about PC vendor results showing that PC growth last year was the highest it has been in the last decade.