Big PC price cuts coming

3 years ago 1

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The International Data Corporation (IDC) has forecast that sales of PCs and tablets will be down significantly in 2022 and will continue to decline in 2023, leading to heavy discounts for consumers.

The firm said that the situation has already led to suppliers cutting prices on inventory and shifting from the premium segment to offering more mid-range products.

“The reality is that both PC and tablet makers will struggle in the coming months as not only are volumes expected to decline but so will average selling prices,” said the IDC’s research manager for mobility and consumer device trackers, Jitesh Ubrani.

The IDC estimated that shipments of traditional PCs would decrease year-on-year by 12% to just under 300 million units in 2022.

In 2023, shipments are expected to decline by a further 5.6% to 281 million units, while tablet shipments are set to drop by 6.7% to 148 million.

Despite the declines, the IDC said that overall demand for personal computing devices would remain above pre-pandemic levels.

The graph below shows the IDC’s forecast for PC and tablet shipments between 2022 and 2026.

The IDC previously reported that PC sales plummeted by 15% in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the same period last year.

Its forecast comes after a report from DigiTimes that said major PC vendors were preparing for fierce price-cutting competition.

Industry insiders told the reputed publication that stock levels of PC inventory remained high at channel distributors.

Another sign of the significant oversupply is Apple launching a rare 10% bulk discount offer to businesses in November 2022.

DigiTimes also said small price cuts might not be enough to convince customers to get new PCs.

That is because many would have already upgraded to new systems during the upgrade “supercycle” that started in 2020, buoyed by the Covid-19 pandemic spurring demand for work-from-home PCs.