GfK: Gaming PCs and accessories are growing enormously

It's no secret that everything related to computer gaming is seeing massive growth. German market research company GfK investigated the PC gaming market and reports revenue of gaming desktop PCs increased by a whopping 55 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2017. Sales of desktop gaming PCs are growing almost double as fast as gaming laptops, which posted 24 percent revenue growth in the same period. Do note that these figures exclude the North America, that market wasn't studied by GfK.

GfK also reports global sales of PC gaming accessories grew 56 percent year-over-year, and that sales of gaming displays skyrocketed 114 percent! The research firm concludes gaming displays are not only the fastest growing category in the gaming accessory segment, but that they're also the largest category as they now account for 57 percent of PC gaming accessory sales.

Here's the full PR from the company with some extra details, including a break-down of the revenue of gaming mice, keyboards, headsets, etc:

PC gaming hardware remained one of the most important drivers of growth for the computer and peripherals manufacturers in the B2C field in the first half of 2017 as well. In addition to desktop PCs and notebooks, gaming accessories also benefited from the continuing boom in the world of electronic games. These are GfK's findings for the global PC gaming hardware market on the occasion of IFA 2017 in Berlin.

After challenging years with new technologies like tablets or smartphones, gaming PCs have developed from a niche segment to a strong selling mainstream product. This trend continued in the first half of 2017 and gaming desktop PCs managed to increase their global revenue by 55 percent compared to the previous year. Portable gaming PCs had a revenue increase of 24 percent. In total, global revenues of all gaming PCs (desktops and notebooks) in the markets measured by GfK (excluding North America) amounted to €1.5 billion.

The greatest share of the revenue here was from the Western European market, which was responsible for 44 percent of all sales at €682 million (a revenue increase of 11 percent). The Asian-Pacific economic region had a share of 34 percent (revenue: €522 million; revenue growth up 67 percent) and Eastern Europe (including Russia) 12 percent (revenue: €193 million; revenue growth up 42 percent).

High demand for PC gaming accessories continues
PC gaming accessories (mice, keyboards, headsets, monitors) also enjoyed persistent high popularity among consumers and can continue the growth of recent years full speed ahead. Worldwide, this segment has achieved an increase in sales of 56 percent over the previous year for the period of January to June. Overall, revenues for the first half of 2017 amounted to 1.1 billion euros.

With revenue growth of 114 percent, gaming monitors in particular made a major contribution to this very good result. High consumer demand was seen around large-format screens (24 inches and above) with high refresh rates, GPU synchronization or curved screens. Gaming monitors are not only the fastest growing accessory segment, but also the highest-selling by far with a share of sales of 57 percent (sales: €597 million). But gaming mice (sales: €130 million; sales growth: up 15 percent), gaming keyboards (sales: €117 million; sales growth: up 23 percent) and gaming headsets (sales: €210 million; sales growth: up 10 percent) were able to achieve significant growth in the first half of 2017, too.

Ongoing growth in PC gaming hardware can also be expected in the second half of the year. The success of e-sports and the continuing spread of virtual reality may provide further positive impulses and generate additional momentum.