Despite a semiconductor shortage, global PC shipments in the first quarter of this year increased 32 percent from a year earlier, preliminary data from research firm Gartner Inc showed.
Shipments in the January-to-March period totaled 69.87 million units from 52.93 million units a year earlier, Gartner said in a report on Monday last week.
The quarterly increase in shipments marked the fastest annual growth since it began tracking the PC market in 2000, Gartner said.
Photo courtesy of Acer Inc
“This growth should be viewed in the context of two unique factors: comparisons against a pandemic-constrained market and the current global semiconductor shortage,” Gartner research director Mikako Kitagawa said in a news release.
“Without the shipment chaos of early 2020, this quarter’s growth might have been lower. However, semiconductor shortages are now adversely affecting the supply chain once again, with shipment lead times for some PCs extending out as far as four months,” Kitagawa said.
PC demand is to remain strong, even after stay-at-home restrictions ease as countries gain control over COVID-19 outbreaks, but vendors and suppliers should avoid creating excess inventory, Gartner said.
In particular, growing PC demand in the educational segment — after the COVID-19 pandemic forced many schools to turn to distance learning — has prompted many vendors to build up their Chromebook inventory, it said.
Chromebook shipments in the first quarter more than tripled from a year earlier, Gartner said, adding that the growth was primarily driven by educational institutions in North America.
An analysis released on April 9 by International Data Corp (IDC) showed that global PC shipments in the first quarter increased 55.2 percent to 83.98 million units year-on-year.
While seasonal factors, component shortages and logistical issues caused the figure to fall 8 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, the sequential decline was the smallest since the first quarter of 2012, when PC shipments declined 7.5 percent sequentially, IDC said in a statement.
The rival researchers use different calculations to measure the market — Gartner defines PCs as desktops, notebooks and ultramobile premium devices, while IDC categorizes them as desktops, notebooks and workstations.
“Unfulfilled demand from the past year has carried forward into the first quarter and additional demand brought on by the pandemic has also continued to drive volume,” IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani said in the statement.
Other factors — such as growth in gaming, the need for higher-performance notebooks in the enterprise market and an increase in demand for touchscreens within the education segment — helped to drive PC demand in the first quarter, the research firm said.
However, the ongoing semiconductor shortage is delaying vendors’ ability to restock inventory and fill customer orders, IDC mobile device trackers program vice president Ryan Reith said in the statement.
“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,” Reith said.
“Component shortages will likely be a topic of conversation for the majority of 2021, but the more important question should be what PC demand will look like in two to three years,” Reith added.
In both the Gartner and IDC reports, Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想) was the No. 1 vendor in the first quarter, followed by HP Inc and Dell Technologies Inc, with Apple Inc and Acer Inc (宏碁) rounding out the top five.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS