Wired
Recently, Canalys released the global PC market shipment data for the second quarter of 2021. Data show that in 2021, the shipment of desktops and notebooks (including workstations) in Q1 increased by 13% year-on-year, with shipments reaching 82.3 million units. Among them, the shipment of notebook computers and mobile workstations increased by 14.6% year-on-year to 66.7 million units; Chromebooks contributed an important force to the increase in shipments.
Source: Canalys
Lenovo and Acer maintain rapid growth, and Apple ranks outside the top three affected by M1
On the whole, global PC shipments have slowed down. In the first quarter, global PC shipments increased by 53.1% year-on-year, breaking through 100 million units, while the growth in the second quarter was only 13%. Compared with the ranking in the first quarter, Samsung was squeezed out of the top five by Acer. The top five manufacturers of global PC shipments are Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer.
Lenovo still ranks first with shipments exceeding 20 million units, accounting for 24.3% of shipments, with an annual growth rate of 14.7%. The establishment of a PC production line allows Lenovo to have supply chain control capabilities and anti-risk capabilities in an unstable market.
Hewlett-Packard followed closely with shipments of 185.94 million units, accounting for 21.6% of the market share. However, HP has the slowest growth rate among the top five manufacturers, at only 2.8%. This is due to the decline in HP’s shipments in Europe, Middle East Africa (EMEA) and Japan.
Dell’s performance in the commercial PC market was outstanding, with shipments in the second quarter maintaining a 16.5% growth.
And Apple’s shipments are far from 220 million units in the first quarter, only 64.12 million units. Industry insiders believe that the emergence of Apple’s M1 chip is a catalyst for Apple’s sales growth in the first quarter of this year. For example, sales have not exceeded 100 million units today.
On the other hand, Acer ranked in the top five with a market share of 7.3%, and its market share continued to grow. It was the company with the most obvious annual growth in the second quarter. Electronic enthusiasts have discovered that Chromebook products are a key product for the growth of Acer’s PC sales, with an annual revenue growth of 41.8% in the second quarter.
Reshaping the PC market?Apple may be in the second half of the year
A review of Apple’s PC shipments in the past finds that Apple’s PC shipments have maintained a constant growth in 2020, thanks to the doubling of shipments of Macs equipped with M1 chips. According to statistics, it is launching Mac products equipped with M1 chips. Later, Apple’s shipments in the first quarter increased by about 70% year-on-year. However, shipments began to decline after Q1 in 2021, perhaps because of insufficient chip supply.
In April of this year, Apple publicly stated that the crisis of chip shortages began to affect the production and sales of Apple’s iPad and Mac. “Success is M1, and failure is M1.” Can Apple change the situation next?
The component supply problem not only affects Apple but also other PC manufacturers. But Canalys said that the degree of insufficient orders and backlogs is decreasing. Take the display driver IC as an example. The delivery cycle of the driver IC is generally about 20 weeks. Orders placed in the first half of the year will be available in the second half of the year. Under the dual benefits of slowing market demand and increased production capacity, the problem of component supply in the second half of the year has been alleviated.
That is to say, with the alleviation of supply problems, Apple will have a new performance in the PC market in the second half of the year.
It is worth noting that Apple will bring the M2 chip in September of this year. From the perspective of smart phones, once a new product is launched, the price of the original product will drop. This also means that with the advent of M2, the price of PC products equipped with the M1 chip will drop. In addition, when M1’s R&D technology gradually matures, the cost will also come down.
Once the price of PC products equipped with M1 drops, Apple will have a strong price/performance advantage. If the first half of the year is Apple’s “low-key period,” then Apple in the second half of the year will be when it “kills the Quartet”, and it may not be a problem to rush to the top three in global sales.
Apple’s self-developed chips may become a variable in the PC market reshuffle. Under the competitive pressure brought by M1, Qualcomm was exposed to be developing a new generation of PC chips, which will add more performance cores. Intel publicly stated that it is working with Samsung to customize the development of a new Intel chip microarchitecture using “multiple XPU cores”.
In addition to the upgrade of the PC processor, the update of the application platform and the system platform may bring new growth vitality to the weak PC market. For example, Apple’s ARM and macOS are updated, Google’s Chrome OS, Microsoft has upgraded Windows 11, and Huawei has Hongmeng. Canalys believes that this will benefit manufacturers and their supply chain partners.
It can be seen that there will be more and more variables in the PC market in the future, and whether Apple’s future performance in the PC market will be as dominant as it does in the smart phone market, you may wish to look forward to the PC market in the second half of the year.