Perhaps the biggest long lasting effect of coronavirus on the world, except the tragic deaths, will be the economical mayhem it has induced. With supply chains around the world being completely disrupted, businesses are taking a massive hit. Even industries that are seeing an increase in demand, like the PC industry, are not immune to the spread of COVID 19, as it saw an 8% decline in Q1 2020.
According to a report by global technology research firm Canalys, PC industry fell by a steep 8%, despite rising demand. The reason for this unprecedented phenomena was cited to be broken supply chains around the world.
The rankings for the top vendors remained undisturbed. Lenovo still leads the market with 12.8 million units shipped, accounting for 23.9% of the market share, and showing a decline of 4.4% in annual growth. HP bagged the second place with 11.7 million units leaving its doors. This accounted for 21.8% of the market share, but the company still saw a 13.8% decline in business annually. Dell came in third, managing to ship 10.5 million units worldwide with a 19.6% market share. Dell was also the only company in the top 5 to register positive growth rate on an year on year basis. Apple and Acer came in fourth and fifth respectively, with 6.0% and 5.8% market shares. Apple saw the highest decline in business out of the top 5 companies, registering a 21% loss in business over the year.
The report further mentioned, that companies started this year with a shortage of Intel processors, which was caused by a “botched transition to 10nm nodes”. Moreover, the situation was escalated when factories in China shut down, leading to an even dire shortage of supply, and thus, increase in demand.
Ishan Dutt, analyst at the firm predicted that while production restraints from China are supposed to lift in the Q2, the demand that Q1 saw was not sustainable. Therefore, the year ahead seems grim in comparison, with the demand in Q2 falling way below Q1 standards.
The effect of the global recession that has been started by coronavirus will be evident on the PC industry, where “businesses will go bankrupt, with millions newly unemployed,” said Ishan. He also added, ““PC vendors will face a challenge to manage supply chain and production correctly over the next three to six months.”
