Lenovo Tops PC Market as Unfulfilled Demands in 2020 Drives 55% Growth in Q1

The sale of traditional PC’s across the world saw significant growth during the first quarter of 2021.

Recently released data by International Data Corporation (IDC) shows the global PC market reached 84 million units during the quarter. This is a whopping 55.2% increase from the amount sold a year ago.

According to the report, the growth was fueled by the shortages faced in the first quarter of 2020 when the global pandemic began. 

Jitesh Ubrani, Research manager for IDC’s Mobile Device Trackers further explained that unfulfilled demand from the past year carried forward into the first quarter and additional demand brought on by the pandemic has also continued to drive volume.

Component Shortages and Logistics Issues

Despite the growth in Q1, data shows that components used for making PC are still in short supply. It also reflected that the pandemic related lockdown still in effect in some parts of the world affected logistics and distribution.

This in part was a responsible for the modest 8% decline from the total units sold in the fourth quarter of 2020.

However, it’s also important to note that industry data shows sequential declines are typical for the first quarter of the new year.

That said, a comparison of the decline from year to year shows that it’s the smallest since the first quarter of 2012 when the PC market declined 7.5% sequentially.

Higher selling Price

With demand rising, it’s not so surprising that the report shows that the average price of PC increased during the quarter.

According to the report, increases in average selling prices (ASPs) have primarily been driven by growth in gaming, the need for higher performance notebooks in the enterprise, and an increase in demand for touchscreens for education purposes.

Jitesh, however, believes that the setbacks like component shortages and logistics issues contributed to the increase in average selling prices.

Lenovo, HP, Dell remain top vendors

The list of top PC vendors remains unchanged from last year. Lenovo leads the pack with a market share of 24.3% after selling over 20 million units during the quarter. This is a 59% increase from the 12.8 million sold during the same period last year.

HP follows with 22.9% of the market after recording a growth of 64.1% in the last year. The PC vendor sold a total of 19.2 million units in the first quarter up from 11.7 million in Q1 2020.

Dell comes in third with a shipment of over 12.9 million but suffered the lowest growth of the top 5. Apple on the other hand saw the highest growth. The Mac maker sold 6.6 million units during the quarter, a 111% growth from the 3.1 million sold in Q1 last year.

Apple has just 8% of the total PC market

Acer completes the top 5 rankings with a similarly remarkable growth of 73.5% after selling about 5.8 million in the quarter.

In summary, after a weak Q1 last year, the huge growth in the first quarter of 2021 shows that the PC market is rebounding. However, to maximize the growth, setbacks like component shortage needs to be fixed.

Ryan Reith, IDC’s Program vice president expressed that Component shortages will likely be a topic of conversation for the majority of 2021. He added the ongoing shortages in the semiconductor space only further prolong the ability for vendors to refill inventory and fulfil orders to customers.

We believe a fundamental shift has occurred around the PC, which will result in a more positive outlook for years to follow. All three segments – business, education, and consumer – are experiencing demand that we didn’t expect to happen regardless of many countries beginning their ‘opening up’ process.

Ryan Reith, program vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers

He concluded that there is a more positive outlook for the PC market in years to follow.