Report: Global market for PC and Macs thriving despite COVID-19

Many companies, such as Apple, have yet to release their fiscal performance results during Q3 of a very trying year, but analysts over at Canalys have published a report detailing estimated global PC shipments during the quarter. Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the PC market as a whole has done well, with a 13 percent growth being the highest growth the market has seen in a decade.

64 million notebooks were shipped, as companies in various industries continued efforts to transition to a remote working setup. While laptops and mobile workstations grew by 28.3 percent, the (markedly less portable) desktop workstation has had shipments drop by 26 percent. After the first wave of COVID-19, it appears that companies are investing in long-term solutions to combat the second wave of infections.

According to Canalys’ estimated numbers, Lenovo continues to control the largest market share in the PC market, although a growth of 11.4 percent is lower than Apple’s 13.2 percent growth. Notably, Dell has seen a loss of 0.5 percent from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020, although rivals such as Acer and HP have all seen growth during a turbulent time.

The overall growth is down to one simple thing, the report says: time. The supply chain as a whole has had time to recover from the initial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, although vendors have now had time to find thir feet. Another example of the increased demand for remote workstations is the UK government’s order for 100,000 notebooks for students to attend distance learning classes.

The new normal has a big part to play, according to Rushabh Doshi, Canalys Research Director:

“As the line between work and home lives is increasingly blurred, it becomes important to position devices towards a wide array of use cases, with a focus on mobility, connectivity, battery life, and display and audio quality.

“These trends will most benefit vendors who provide holistic solutions that enable their customers to make structural changes to their operations. Although the focus has been on commercial PC demand in the last two quarters, consumer spending during the holiday season is set to bring more joy to the PC market”

As many affected countries brace for a second wave of COVID-19, the importance of mobile workstations—and remote working tools as a whole—cannot be overstated. The continued digitalisation of the economy goes hand in hand with this, and based on the numbers here, the demand is certainly there.

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