Tablet and PC market forecast from Canalys

Tablet and PC market forecast from Canalys
Tablet and PC shipments will drop 2.1 percent to 398 million units in 2018, said Canalys research analyst Ishan Dutt in a forecast report.

But this represents the smallest decline of the past four years and sets the tone for an era of stability.

Canalys said consumer refresh cycles have finally started to stabilize, and the largest PC vendors have focused on new, fast-growing categories, such as gaming PCs, Chromebooks and convertibles.

On the commercial side, Windows 10 migration remains a driver for hardware refresh, as businesses are forced to move from Intel Skylake-generation microarchitectures to newer processor technologies.

Technology vendors now have several strategic options for achieving growth. Firstly, several vendors are tracking their customers that are still running Windows 7 and will target these accounts with sales teams.
PC industry forecast from Canalys
Secondly, technology vendors will invest further in Device as a Service (DaaS) offerings, which lock-in PC refresh cycles.

Finally, several vendors will invest to grow the Chrome OS platform outside of the United States this year, with a specific focus on the education sector.

“Components such as DRAM will remain constrained in the short-term, and vendors will pass most of the increased costs onto customers, driving up ASPs,” Canalys research analyst Ishan Dutt said.

Dedicated gaming PCs have emerged as a hotspot in large markets, such as the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

The consumer market is likely to see new brands challenging the likes of HP, Lenovo and Dell. There are lower barriers to entry from a channel perspective compared with the commercial sector.

Huawei and Xiaomi are attempting to disrupt selected markets. But these two Chinese firms have a range of products or channel partners to trouble Dell, HP or Lenovo.

Despite a recent rise in Apple iPad shipments, the tablet market faces decline as consumers prefer smartphones as their primary mobile devices and rely on traditional PCs for more compute-intensive tasks.

The tablet category is expected to dip almost 3 percent per year on average from 2017 to 2022, down almost 150 million units from the market peak in 2014.

Canalys Analyst Robin Ody said: “The connectivity, portability and display size of cheaper slate tablets deliver a solid value proposition to important verticals, such as education, healthcare and retail.”

Resellers are pitching tablet devices such as the Apple iPad Pro and Microsoft Surface Pro to businesses as part of workforce transformation initiatives.

Related News

Latest News

Latest News