PC Sales Fell 6 Percent in Q1 2022
- Paul Thurrott
- Apr 20, 2022
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The great COVID PC sales boom might finally be winding down: hardware makers sold 79.2 million PCs in Q1 2022, down 6 percent from the 84.15 million they sold in the year-ago quarter.
As always, all of the numbers presented here are an average of the estimates provided by the market researchers at Gartner and IDC.
According to Gartner, a sharp drop in Chromebook sales significantly contributed to the overall market decline. (Gartner says that PC sales actually grew 3.9 percent YOY if you ignore Chromebooks.)
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“After an unprecedented Chromebook surge in 2020 and early 2021, driven by demand from the U.S. educational market, Chromebook growth has tempered,” Gartner research director Mikako Kitagawa says. “It was a challenging quarter for the PC and Chromebook market to achieve growth, as this time last year the PC market registered its highest growth in decades.”
IDC blamed a near-record year-over-year PC sales comparable.
“We have witnessed some slowdown in both the education and consumer markets, but all indicators show demand for commercial PCs remains very strong,” IDC group vice president Ryan Reith added. “We also believe that the consumer market will pick up again in the near future. The result of 1Q22 was PC shipment volumes that were near record levels for a first quarter.”
Whatever the reason, the top five PC makers remain unchanged. Lenovo was once again the world’s biggest maker of PCs, with 18.45 million units sold, down about 10 percent YOY, and with 23.3 percent marketshare. HP was again number two, with 15.85 million units sold, down about 17.8 percent (20 percent marketshare). Gartner says that sales for each fell in the quarter largely because of Chromebooks.
And Dell was number three with 13.75 million units sold, up 6.1 percent (17.4 percent). Apple (7.1 million, up 6.45 percent, 9 percent marketshare) and ASUS (5.5 million, up 19 percent, 7 percent marketshare) were in fourth and fifth place, respectively.