According to the latest figures from Strategy Analytics, global demand for new notebooks remained resilient during the challenging first quarter of the year, with total shipments contracting by just 2% year-on-year. However, the market is expected to face supply constraints in the second quarter as demand picks up.
“We expect that as COVID-19 spreads globally in Q2, large corporations and educational institutions will place more orders for notebooks to support work/learn-from-home initiatives around the world,” said Eric Smith, Director of Connected Computing. “Consumer demand will be soft as average people face economic hardship, but commercial demand could balance out that softness.”
In total, 37.9 million notebooks were shipped in Q1 2020. The only two vendors that increased their shipments compared to last year were Dell (up 5%, with 6.9 million notebook shipments) and Lenovo (up 1%, with 8.9 million shipments).
Apple’s notebook shipments fell the most significantly, falling by 16%, followed by Asus (-15%).
Lenovo remains the largest notebook brand, accounting for 23.5% of the market, followed by HP (21.3%), Dell (18.2%), Apple (8.0%), and Asus (6.6%). Other vendors make up the remaining 22.5% of the market.
“Notebook vendors with a heavy reliance on China for its supply chain and those which did not have high levels of inventory before the COVID-19 outbreak had most difficulty in Q1 on a global basis,” said Chirag Upadhyay, Senior Research Analyst at Strategy Analytics. “From a consumer standpoint, the vendors which are most reliant on the Chinese domestic market experienced the biggest downturn.”
