What you need to know
- PC shipments in Q1 2022 fell 5.5% compared to the same quarter last year.
- Despite the drop, PC shipments surpassed earlier expectations and totaled 80.5 million.
- PC shipments saw historically high growth over the past two years, so a dip was expected as the market returned to normal.
Shipments of PCs fell by 5.1% in the first quarter of 2022 compared to Q1 2021. Those figures, which come via IDC, include desktops, notebooks, and workstations. While growth fell, 80.5 million PCs shipped in Q1 2022, which is considered a strong figure.
"The focus shouldn't be on the year-over-year decline in PC volumes because that was to be expected," said Group President with IDC's Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers Ryan Reith. "The focus should be on the PC industry managing to ship more than 80 million PCs at a time when logistics and supply chain are still a mess, accompanied by numerous geopolitical and pandemic-related challenges."
Reith noted that while education and consumer demands for PCs have dipped that consumer PCs continue to be in demand.
Total PC shipments fell year-over-year, but Dell, Apple, and ASUS saw growth during that time period. The below figures are scaled in terms of thousands of units.
| Company | 1Q22 Shipments | 1Q22 Market Share | 1Q21 Shipments | 1Q21 Market Share | 1Q22/1Q21 Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Lenovo | 18.3 | 22.7% | 20.1 | 23.7% | -9.2% |
| 2. HP Inc. | 15.8 | 19.7% | 19.2 | 22.7% | -17.8% |
| 3. Dell Technologies | 13.7 | 17.1% | 12.9 | 15.3% | 6.1% |
| 4. Apple | 7.2 | 8.9% | 6.9 | 8.1% | 4.3% |
| 5T. ASUS* | 5.5 | 6.9% | 4.7 | 5.6% | 17.7% |
| 5T. Acer Group* | 5.4 | 6.8% | 5.8 | 6.8% | -5.9% |
| Others | 14.5 | 18.0% | 15.1 | 17.8% | -4.0% |
| Total | 80.5 | 100.0% | 84.8 | 100.0% | -5.1% |
Another piece of evidence that the PC market is strong is the fact that manufacturers frequently make the best Windows laptops over Chromebooks when forced to choose.
"Supply has also been unusually tight for Chromebooks as component shortages have led vendors to prioritize Windows machines due to their higher price tags, further suppressing Chromebook shipments on a global scale," said Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager for IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers team in previous IDC report.
A record-breaking 341 million PCs shipped in 2021, so it was expected that growth figures would slow down.
