Due to ongoing work-from-home and school-from-home trends during the pandemic, global sales of traditional PCs (inclusive of desktops, notebooks, and workstations) experienced a 26.1% year over year growth during Q4 2020 to 91.6 million units, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. The same category of devices grew 13.1% year over year for the full year 2020 with the catalysts being work from home, remote learning, and restored consumer demand.
"Every segment of the supply chain was stretched to its limits as production once again lagged behind demand during the quarter," said Jitesh Ubrani research manager for IDC's Mobile Device Trackers. "Not only were PC makers and ODMs dealing with component and production capacity shortages, but logistics remained an issue as vendors were forced to resort to air freight, upping costs at the expense of reducing delivery times."
