What you need to know
- PCs experienced overall market growth in 2019.
- This is the first time the PC market grew over a year since 2011.
- Gartner and IDC point to the end of Windows 7 support as a contributing factor to the growth of the PC market.
In 2019, the PC market experienced its first year of growth over a year since 2011. Both IDC and Gartner state that the overall PC market grew and that the end of Windows 7 support is a contributing factor. The Verge points out that the PC market grew in the first quarter of 2018, but that 2019 is the first year the market saw growth over the course of an entire year.
IDC states that worldwide PC shipments grew by 2.7 percent up to 266.7 million devices. Gartner states a lower 0.6 percent growth over the same time period. It's worth highlighting that Gartner does not include Chromebooks in its figures, which might account for some of the discrepancies in figures.
Both firms point toward the end of Windows 7 support as a contributing factor for PC market growth. IDC states that "The storyline in the commercial sector for most of the year was around the momentum driven by businesses transitioning PCs over to Windows 10 before the end of support for Windows 7 arrives in January 2020." Gartner echoes a similar sentiment, stating, "We expect this growth to continue through this year even after Windows 7 support comes to an end this month, as many businesses in emerging regions such as China, Eurasia and the emerging Asia/Pacific have not yet upgraded."
Despite the fact that Windows 7 is over 10 years old, millions of devices run the operating system. As support ends and companies and general consumers migrate to newer devices, the overall PC market should see a positive bump.
