Credit: Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash
The Australian PC market grew last year by 11.8 per cent, with a significant lean towards notebooks and away from desktops.
This is according to analyst firm IDC, which claimed that demand for notebooks was strong over both consumer and commercial markets, recording growth of 29.3 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively, to bring total units up to 3.68 million.
This made up about three quarters of IDC's interpretation of the overall Australian PC market — desktops and workstations as well as laptops — which rose to a total of 4.87 million units for the year.
Meanwhile, desktop shipments for the year declined by 8.6 per cent overall, driven by a 26.6 per cent fall in the commercial segment, but softened by the consumer segment's growth of 27.8 per cent, which was partly due to the demand for all-in-one devices.
Reynard Lowell, IDC Australia’s associate market analyst for PC devices, said the lean towards notebooks over desktops was due to the move towards a hybrid work environment. This, however, was surpassed by the consumer demand, with Black Friday posting record demand in the market, the firm claimed.
“The consumer market saw huge demand as PCs became the most used devices at home and households are slowly moving to a one PC per person model,” he said
“Gaming PCs also saw huge growth as people are looking for indoor entertainment and the successful launch of Nvidia’s new RTX 3000 series which enticed enthusiasts to upgrade.”
Monitors also saw growth — PC monitors grew by 31.3 per cent during 2020, while gaming monitors surged by 133 per cent, year on-year.
However, the overall PC market growth was softened by the ongoing component shortage, resulting in a year-on-year decline of 1.4 per cent in the overall market during the fourth quarter of 2020. That being said, IDC has previously claimed the component shortage is anticipated to be resolved by the middle of 2021.
Regardless, this isn’t expected to be the only expected decline in the short term, as IDC predicted the Australian PC market will drop in 2021 by 4.1 per cent, year on year, largely due to the commercial market with organisations remaining cautious about making purchases.
Meanwhile, the second half of the year however is anticipated to be stronger as the economy becomes more stable.
Last year's notebook success in Australia follows similar trends in the Asia Pacific market, where the firm claimed the device type grew by 12.4 per cent in 2020 to 65.8 million units shipped.
