After the outbreak of the pandemic, the PC market sags in 2022

Let’s get to the heart of the news: global PC shipments to fall 9.5% in 2022according to the latest forecasts from Gartner, a technology consulting firm specializing in this area.

After the personal computer market experienced a second golden age in 2020 and 2021 thanks to mass remote work due to the pandemic, the sector is now in a recession with many culprits.

“A perfect storm of geopolitical turmoil, high inflation, currency fluctuations and supply chain disruptions have reduced demand for devices from businesses and consumers around the world.said Ranjit Atwal, senior analyst at Gartner.

In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, this figure is expected to fall even further, to around 14%. with a combination of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, rising prices and the unavailability of products from China due to local shutdowns due to the coronavirus.

Gartner predicts that shipments of tablets and mobile phones will also decline over the same period. drop by 9% and 7% respectively. The 5G phone market is also expected to be hit hard by the downturn, mainly due to the collapse of the Chinese smartphone market.

Atwal said China’s 5G phone market is expected to double-digit growth early in the year. However, the impact of China’s zero-tolerance policy on COVID-19 and the lockdowns that followed have hampered these sales of 5G smartphones.

“Growth has slowed significantly from a projected 47% increase at the start of the year, resulting in a loss of 95 million 5G phone shipments.“, he pointed out.

This global downturn is likely to affect chip manufacturers as well. Following the release of Q1 2022 financial results in April, Intel CFO David Zimmer explained that component supply issues remain an ongoing problem.

And that the latest COVID shutdowns in Shanghai have further increased supply chain risk and contributed to inflationary pressures hurting the PC market.