Canalys’ PC market analysis for Q4 2022 and full 2022 has been released, and there are two ways to look at the numbers. While 2021 was a big year for the PC market, fueled by the pandemic, 2022 has seen enthusiasm cool off. Overall, PC shipments were down 16% year-over-year, but compared to 2019 (pre-pandemic), they’re actually up 7%.
Notebooks took the biggest hit with 30% fewer sales in the fourth quarter of 2022, while for the full year 2022 the decline is 19%. Desktops fared slightly better with a decline of 24% in the fourth quarter of 2022 and 7% year over year.
The Canalys Senior Analyst points to a couple of reasons for the decline. The most obvious is the bad economic environment throughout 2022 with rising inflation, energy costs and interest rates. And as expected, users weren’t too keen on spending their money on luxuries like PCs.
Supplier channels have tried to counter this with deep discounts throughout 2022, but it has not been enough. Indeed, even during the holiday season in the fourth quarter of 2022, sales weren’t impressive. In a survey released in December last year, about 60% of the total 250 channel partners said they expect flat or lower revenue in 2023.
Lenovo still leads the pack in Q4 and full-year 2022 with market share of 23.7% in Q4 and 24.1% in 2022, followed by HP and Dell. As you may have noticed, all of the manufacturers in the top 5 experienced declines in shipments with Apple and Asus taking less of a hit than the others.
Looking ahead, Canalys believes that the PC market will see some recovery in the second half of 2023 and will regain strength in 2024, so the future is not bleak. All those people who bought laptops and desktops during 2020 and 2021 will need to upgrade when their devices reach their end of life.
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