IDC expects PC sales to grow by 18% in 2021

Although the current global semiconductor industry is facing a shortage of supply, according to IDC’s latest report, the PC market is still growing in this situation, with daily shipments approaching 1 million units. IDC predicts that the PC market will grow by 18.1% in 2021.

For the PC market where many electronic parts are in short supply, such growth figures are also quite surprising. It is true that the current supply is seriously insufficient, but people’s demand for PCs is increasing. If this kind of supply and demand continues, the PC market will continue to grow as the supply slowly rises in the next year or two. Although the demand for PCs will decline when the epidemic is over, IDC still has an outlook for an average annual growth rate of 3% for the next 5 years.

Ironically, the growth of the PC market was driven by notebook computers before, but now it is traditional desktop computers that are driving the growth. IDC said this was due to a shortage of notebook computer components. At present, the output of CPU and GPU components that require advanced processes has been slowly increasing, but other chips such as audio ICs, sensors, PMICs, and display driver chips that require 40nm or older processes are in short supply, and more than 50% of the entire semiconductor industry needs to rely on these old processes.

IDC predicts that this may prompt customers who originally wanted to buy laptops to switch to desktops, and the sales of desktops will increase steadily. However, since it will take a long time for the capacity supply to return to the pre-epidemic level, there will still be a lot of shortages in the future.