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Shanghai surprise? Another analyst sees historic PC decline

Remember when China's tech execs warned lockdown in its biggest city would have 'severe consequences?'

More bad news on the PC shipments, with market intel firm Counterpoint Research showing a historic year-on-year decline that echoed Gartner's estimations earlier this month.

The global shipments fell 11.1 percent year-on-year in Q2 2022 to 71.2 million units, a number slightly below that of pre-pandemic Q4 2019. Consumer PC demand has declined since it peaked in Q4 2021.

Counterpoint attributed the historic decline mostly to the effect of China’s COVID lockdowns on supply chains. It predicted the supply issues will resolve before 2023.

But not all the blame lies on COVID lockdowns. The research firm said regional conflicts and global inflation have tapered consumer and enterprise spending.

Among PC manufacturers, Lenovo won top place for Q2 2022 with 24.4 percent market share even though its shipments fell 12.7 percent year-on-year to 17.4 million units. HP came in second place after its market share dropped from 18.5 million units to 13.4, narrowly beating out Dell at 13.1 percent.

Counterpoint Research has revised its 2022 PC shipment forecast to reflect a 9 percent year-on-year decline. Comparatively, IDC predicted shipments would decline 8.2 percent year-on-year in 2022. Like Gartner, it said the drop represented the biggest fall in nine years.

The slump in sales was reflected in Samsung's Q2 earnings released on Thursday. The company said PC sales were down and the slump would not only remain but could potentially spread to enterprise segments.

Samsung largely cited the same factors as Counterpoint Research: supply chain issues resulting from China's COVID lockdowns and "macroeconomic uncertainties."

In April, Chinese tech execs warned of the "severe consequences" that would come of extensive COVID lockdowns in the Shanghai area that caused factories to shut down operations all together or often reduce operations with staff living on site. ®

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