The demand for PCs has surged in Q1 2020 due to COVID-19 and the shift to working / learning from home. Surprisingly however shipments have dropped due to the effects of the pandemic on production and supply chain management. In the first quarter 53.7 million desktops, notebooks and workstations were shipped by vendors according to the latest research by Canalys.

The top vendor rankings remained stable with Lenovo, HP and Dell all going well, however Apple suffered drops of 20%. Products have been flying off the shelves as consumers rush to secure hardware for remote learning and working, combined with the impacts on production from limited Intel yields and Chinese factory shutdowns meant their was limited product to sell. Cost was not the major deciding factor for consumers so we can expect PC vendors to report healthy profits, shipments should start increasing again in Q2 as production and distribution issues are resolved.