According to data from research firm Gartner Inc, worldwide shipments in the third quarter has dropped by 19.5 percent from a year ago. This makes it the steepest decline in more than two decades. In the recent quarter computer makers have shipped 68 million PCs which is down from 84.5 million units from the previous year.
Mikako Kitagawa an analyst at Gartner said, "This quarter’s results could mark a historic slowdown for the PC market."
According to the report the supply-chain disruptions have now eased but high inventory is now a major problem as the PC demand in both consumer and business market has gone down.
Another data provider International Data Corp said that global shipments have declined 15 percent in the third quarter. A total of 74.3 million units were dispatched this quarter and the numbers are higher than that of the pandemic.
In recent months HP Inc. and Dell Technologies Inc. have been warning of tapering consumer demands. This is due to a slowing global economy that is making businesses more cautious in their spending decisions. Even consumers are hesitating to purchase PCs as inflation eats into the budget.
This is also directly affecting the semiconductor industry. With several countries like India and US incentivising new fabs chip-making will take a leap. But will they survive when the supply is going down?
Even the chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has cut its revenue forecast for the most recent quarter giving weaker-than-expected demand for the personal computers as a reason.
But the exception in this is Apple as the shipment of Macs, iMacs and MacBooks has grown during the third quarter of 2022 by 40.2 percent year-over-year. This growth is partially caused by Apple trying to catch up with demands they couldn't meet earlier in the year due to COVID lockdown in China that hurt their production. To add to this the launch of the 2022 MacBook Air could have also helped with the increase in shipment.
