PC market suffering from higher component pricing

Analysts from Gartner predict global sales of PCs, tablets, and smartphones will hit a combined total of 2.28 billion units this year. Mobile phone sales are on track to hit 1.4 percent growth, while the PC and tablet market is facing a 1.2 percent decline. Among other factors, higher component pricing is one of the aspects that's holding the PC market back:

"The PC market is still hindered by the undersupply of the DRAM market for all of 2018, due to the lack of new wafer capacity coming online. As a result, PC vendors will continue to increase their prices throughout 2018," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. "Larger screens and more graphic boards also mean rising costs, adding to the bill of hardware materials for businesses and household buyers."

While the PC market is price-sensitive, Gartner is witnessing business demand migrating to high-end PCs such as ultramobile premium devices, where value is seen as higher. Gartner estimates shipments of ultramobile premium units to increase by 12% in 2018.

The report also notes that 2019 or 2020 could be an important year for PC replacements due to the end of support for Windows 7 in January 2020. Windows 7 is still very popular, but everyone using this OS to date needs to realize that security updates will cease on January 14, 2020. There's still some time, but it's best to upgrade to Windows 10 before that date.

Via: DigiTimes