14 DAY TRIAL // As weird as it might sound, the traditional PC is becoming a more expensive piece of technology even though the number of buyers is continuously dropping with every new quarter.
Lenovo, which is one of the largest PC makers in the world, has said recently that it expects the PC price to increase in 2017, citing the shortage of components as one of the reasons.
Gianfranco Lanci, corporate president and COO at Lenovo, explained during a recent company conference that PC manufacturers are currently trying to deal with an important shortage of parts like memories, batteries, and displays, which can only lead to bigger prices for all PCs, no matter their form factors, including here desktops, laptops, and 2-in-1s.
Dropping demand, bigger price
And by the looks of things, there’s also another reason to blame for the increasing price of PCs this year: the dropping number of buyers.
It’s not a secret that PC makers have been experiencing declining sales in the last years, and the same trend is likely to be maintained over the next quarters, so in order to cope with weak demand, most of them are trying to increase the price in order to maintain profit margins.
The most recent report from analyst firm IDC reveals that worldwide sales of traditional PCs, including here desktops, notebooks, and workstations, reached 70.2 million units in the fourth quarter of 2016, which represents a decline of 1.5 percent year-on-year.
These are good results, though, IDC says, as they show “a trend of stabilizing growth.” Lenovo continues to be the number one PC maker with 15.6 million units sold in Q4 2016, while HP is the runner-up with 15.2 million. Dell comes third with 11 million.
On the other hand, Apple and ASUS both declined during the quarter and lost 0.9 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively, with sales dropping to 5.2 and 5.1 million units.
“The contraction in traditional PC shipments experienced over the past five years finally appears to be giving way as users move to update systems. We have a good opportunity for traditional PC growth in commercial markets, while the consumer segment should also improve as it feels less pressure from slowing phone and tablet markets,” IDC said.
At this point, it’s hard to estimate how big the price increase can be given the number of system configurations out there, but most manufacturers are expected to boost prices as soon as this spring.
