The Middle East and Africa (MEA) PC market is expected to have another positive year, as the coronavirus pandemic will continue to drive demand for remote working and learning, according to International Data Corporation (IDC).
The research firm estimated that the region’s 2021 shipments of personal computing (PC) devices, which include desktops, notebooks, workstations and tablets, will reach 22.7 million, a 3.8 percent increase over the previous year.
“The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which are still causing a large portion of end users to work and study from home, continue to drive demand for personal computing devices in the region,” said Fouad Charakla, IDC’s senior research manager for client devices in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa.
The global PC market had fluctuated over the past several years, as smartphone usage surged. During the first quarter of last year, shipments to the Middle East and Africa region fell 10.2 percent year on year.
Shipments rebounded during October to December 2020, with about six million desktops, notebooks, workstations and tablets landing in the MEA market.
The whole year registered more than 302 million devices shipped worldwide, up 13 percent, which was the biggest annual increase since 2010.
Forecast
According to IDC, this year will see the highest volume of notebooks shipped into the region since 2014, partly fuelled by state-backed initiatives within the education sector.
“Large-scale, government-backed initiatives in the education sector are under discussion in several countries across the region. Each of these projects will comprise almost entirely of mobile computing devices – namely notebooks and tablets,” Charakla said.
The desktop segment will also see an increase in demand, as more commercial end-users look to purchase these devices this year.
Tablets, on the other hand, will experience a decline, primarily due to the fact that some of the massive education projects that were seen across the region in 2020 are unlikely to be repeated at the same magnitude in 2021, according to IDC.