PC shipments fell almost 9% in 2023 according to data from IDC

The analyst company IDC has announced that PC shipments declined by 9% in 2023 following excess shipments during the pandemic and constrained budgets due to high inflation. Despite an annual decline, IDC pointed out that things had begun to stabilize in the middle of 2023 and during the fourth quarter, unit shipments actually grew 6.1% year-over-year.

According to IDC, the trend reversal in the fourth quarter will lead into a better 2024 where a market recovery is predicted thanks to several market drivers coalescing. Going into some detail, Jay Chou, research manager for IDC’s Worldwide Client Devices Trackers, said:

“We expect several drivers to take place beginning in the latter half of 2024. With Windows 10 support expiring in late 2025, we expect enterprises to speed up the migration toward Windows 11, which should last through next year. We also expect new CPU and GPU launches to occur around this timeframe. Finally, current exploration around AI for work should translate into an expansion of use cases, including model development, across numerous industries.”

Going back to the fourth quarter of 2023, IDC reports that Dell was the largest OEM in terms of shipments followed by HP, Lenovo, NEC, and ASUS.

Outlining its forecast, IDC said that workstation shipments will grow by 5.2% in 2024 then in 2025 momentum will build with growth topping 7.9% as customers seek to transition to Windows 11 by the Windows 10 retirement date in October 2025. After this, IDC expects the growth in this sector to moderate.

IDC’s forecast is predicting a period in the not-to-distant-future so it should not take long to hear how well it predicted things. While inflation may be falling, the higher prices aren’t going anywhere and unemployment could rise soon as a result of higher interest rates having an impact on the economy; this could suppress the shipments of PCs in 2024 and 2025.

Source: IDC

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