Tokyo Olympics, US tariffs Trump Europe's Brexit shakes as global PC shipments balloon to fattest figure in 7 years Businesses heading for the Windows 7 escape hatch and US retailers panic-buying ahead of the next round of trade tariffs helped PC shipments rise globally in Q3 at the fastest rate in seven-and-a-half years. This is according to sales-in figures collated by number-cruncher Canalys: 70.9 million desktops, notebooks and …
Yeah, right. When reading the article carefully (ok, not too carefully) the real background is that people are no longer deferring the investments but instead buying earlier than they anticipated / intended. This effect will thus be of extremely short duration. When that demand has been fulfilled, the next quarter(s) will be lower. Basically: these are sales that would have happened in a few months anyway, and that are now not happening then.
Between more tariffs being handed out willy nilly, GM joining the junk bond club, Fannie and Freddie Mae likely to be sold off to the same players that kicked off the last crisis, the Fed spiralling interest rates down past hells gate while the rest of America is borroing itself to a standstill, you may get your wish for a crisis but I don't think it will stimulate PC sales.
Personally I have started growing potatoes and stockpiling tinned food.
"You could always threaten a bigger crisis for next quarter ...."
Looking at the larger picture, PC sales have been in steady decline for years but there was an expectation that there would be a slight sales bump in 2018 that never came (Gartner indicated a 1.3% decline for the year), I would suggest due to a sluggish economy and high component costs leading to pent up demand in 2019.
We have seen (from sales figures) businesses replacing PC's in 2019 to meet the Win7 end-of-life - the threat of tariffs/consumer tax increases is/has likely reduced the likelihood of purchases being delayed until 2020.
I predict stories about the death of the PC in 2020 when this largely artificial bubble bursts leading to a mid-to-high teens percentage decline in sales in Q1/Q2 as the demand disappears, regardless of the next crisis... Aside from the Win7 end-of-life, does anyone see anything to drive actual demand versus the significant declines caused by the increased power of mobile devices?
Reference for overall PC market for context: https://www.statista.com/chart/12578/global-pc-shipments
I wouldn't leave it past Christmas. The last 6 months have seen significant drops in CPU/RAM/flash prices or corresponding performance/capacity increases for BYO systems and pre-built systems are pretty competitive compared to 12 months ago.
At some point the bubble will pop - long term demand is still declining, so the entire supply chain is looking to reduce costs.
Assuming they are talking about a single year, and sales to the USA only, which is 60 million PCs, and assuming the average PC selling price is around $650, then 10% tariff would be $65 on 60 million PCs which is $3.9 bn.
Unless they mistakenly applied a 100% tariff, which would get you to around $39 bn.
Or they used the whole price of the PC in the calculation (a mistake, in my view).
There may be some journalists involved in the calculation of the figures.
They may be in a hurry, or lazy...
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