Recent years have been difficult for all markets, as the COVID-19 pandemic and the semiconductor crisis have significantly affected production and logistics processes. An analytical forecast from Gartner foresees a drop in the supply of personal computers by a significant 9.5%.

In general figures, the share of ordinary user computers reaches 13.5% on an annual basis against 7.2% of the business segment. The EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region will suffer even more — 14%. According to analysts, this is due to “uncertainty caused by conflicts, rising prices and a general lack of goods”. It is also noted that the lockdowns in China play a role in this.

And everything is not very good not only with the PC. Although this market is the worst in the forecast, tablets are not far behind – 9%, and smartphones saw a decline of 7.1%. Overall, the general decline for all device types is expected to be 7.6% in the report. It is noted that last year the market was on the contrary growing, with the success of smartphones accounting for growth of 5%, and for PCs – a much more pleasant 11%.

Speaking to The Register, Gartner senior analyst Ranjit Atwal notes the Chromebook category as one of the most affected.

That’s really because of the uptick we saw around education buying – mainly in the US, but also in Europe to some extent. The expectation was that might continue … but it didn’t.

Citing issues such as the lingering pandemic, margin-squeezing inflationary pressures and the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine being felt in countries like France and Germany, Atwal said there was “general apprehension about what we do moving forward, and that apprehension normally turns itself into budget constraints.”

Smartphone manufacturers have high hopes for 5G, because last year’s growth rate of devices with support for this technology was 65%.  But the prognosis is still not very good, because it predicts a two percent drop even in China.