Welcome to the twilight of 2023, where we just witnessed an event in the tech world as deliciously rare as a perfect croissant: PC shipments have finally seen an uptick, defying the gravity of an eight-quarter downturn. Cast your memory back to the relative stone age of 2022, and you’ll see that we’ve squeaked past that year’s numbers by a whimsical 0.3%, summoning up 63.3 million units in the fourth quarter according to the ace detectives over at Gartner, Inc.
Hitting the rewind button even further, this is akin to the comeback tour we’ve been waiting for since the nostalgic days of 2006 – the last time we saw shipment levels dipping below the magical 250-million mark. Yet, in a plot twist no one saw coming, 2023 has officially become the year we pressed pause, settling at a rather solid 241.8 million units.
Enter Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner’s Director Analyst and our guide through this tech terrain. She doesn’t mince her words. Kitagawa throws us a bone, telling us the industry has scraped the very bottom of the decline barrel. Yes, inventory was a kind of Greek tragedy for the past two years, but hold the phones, it’s been normalized! Pop the champagne for this modest improvement signaling equilibrium amidst supply and demand.
However, don’t toss your party hats in the air just yet; Kitagawa foresees a wild ride ahead with component prices set to hitch a ride on the upswing in 2024. Mix in a pinch of geopolitical seasoning and a dash of economic unpredictability, and you get one zesty outlook for the PC marketscape.
Over in the corner of the room, the big six vendors clink glasses as they maintain their standings, demonstrating that stability can be the new sexy. These tech titans managed to hold the line without dropping any market share dominos. Gartner’s crystal ball is gleaming with positivity projecting a rise in annual market growth come 2024. Talk about an anticipation fiesta.
Lenovo, you sly fox, you’ve broken through the doldrums with a 3.2% year-over-year growth. Not since Q3 of 2021 have we seen such a spectacle with curtains drawn back displaying growth in EMEA and the Americas. Boo-hiss goes to Asia Pacific and Japan, which couldn’t keep up the momentum.
Meanwhile, Apple and Acer are strutting their growth with sass on the worldwide stage. HP Inc. is serving us consecutive growth realness for dessert, even as Dell and ASUS watch their share pie shrink to portion control sizes.
Stateside, we’ve seen PC passion rising like a phoenix for the first time since mid-2021. Although desktops played the shrinking violet, laptops came out to strut their stuff, showing off a solid 1.8% growth. Kitagawa spills the tea, noting that the US economy has been flexing, which read like love letters to the small and midsize business sector. Yet, she winks, don’t expect big enterprises to go on a spending spree – they’re playing hard to get until 2024.
Who’s king of the US PC hill, you ask? HP holds the crown with nearly 28% market love, leaving Dell in its 24.2% silver shadow. EMEA, you beauty, soared to peaks unseen since the end of 2021 with an 8.7% growth, making it the catwalk model of PC market expansion.
Class photo time: Asia Pacific, say “cheese” – or maybe not. You recorded a seventh-quarter decline, with a particularly chilly performance from Greater China. It’s a mixtape of fortunes across the board, with Mature Asia Pacific’s subtle dip and Emerging Asia’s modest up-tick.
Let’s not beat around the chipset – 2023 has been a bruising chapter in the annals of PC history, bowing out with the most dramatic of exits, a 14.8% plummet since the Covid era boom. Double-digit declines, twice in a row. If there’s any consolation, it’s in looking forward to the imminent glow-up prophesied for 2024. So, gear up, tech aficionados – it’s going to be a rollercoaster ride through the circuits and silicon!
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