2021 Was A Great Year To Sell PCs, But Not To Buy Them

Around 340 Million PCs Sold … Yet The Desktop Remains Dead Somehow

Gartner and IDC are both reporting that 2021 was a banner year for PC sales, one not seen since 2013 and up from last year by 10-15% depending on which source you reference. Lenovo continues to lead the pack, accounting for almost 25% of the entire market, with HP and Dell close on their heels.  The three make up the vast majority of PC sales globally; Apple doesn’t even make up 10% of the market regardless of the variety of new releases over the past few years.  Then again, Gartner and IDC only measure units sold, not the percentage of money spent.

Windows 11 is likely a major factor in this, as TPM 2.0 is rather new and in most cases requires a hardware update to run.  This has also lead to a banner year in electronic waste as those older systems were dumped in favour of new ones.   The Verge amusingly reports that “the fourth quarter in the US was hit by supply chain issues”, leaving some to wonder what it is we have been experiencing in the various quarters since Q2 2020.   That aside, they also reference a plummet in the sales of Chromebooks which was observed by Gartner which was somewhat unexpected.

It seems that the best way to boost PC sales is to limit their supply.