Growth in Africa and Middle East personal computing market in Q3 2020

Africa and the Middle East(AME) saw an increase in the personal computing devices (PCD) market which consists of desktops, workstations, tablets and notebooks. According to an industry analysis conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC), shipments of PCD increased by an impressive 23,5% year on year during Q3 2020.

The global technology research and consulting firm’s latest worldwide Quarterly PCD tracker indicates that up to 6,5million units were shipped across the AME region in Q3 2020. The highest quarterly volume since Q4 2016.

The effects of the Covid19 pandemic continued to drive demand for PCDs across the region, thanks to the continuation of widespread home learning and remote working practices.

Fouad Charakla, IDC’s senior research manager for client devices in Africa, Turkey and the Middle East said

In the tablet space, Samsung retained its leading position endorsed by large scale education delivery to Egypt which saw a massive delivery of tablets endorsed by a government initiative. Huawei came in second and Lenovo beat Apple for the third slot.

The top three vendors for PCs maintained their rankings in Q3 2020. HP staying in the lead followed by Lenovo and Dell which has experienced a year-on-year decline in shipments.

Turkey was another big driver, where PCD shipments grew more than 50% year on year in Q3 2020 as the country recovered from the significant slowdown in PCD demand it experienced last year. In other key markets, Saudi Arabia and the UAE both experienced modest growth in shipments; however, South Africa experienced a considerable decline in shipments owing to the economic challenges the country continues to face, which are inhibiting demand for PCDs

states Charakla.

The pandemic-induced factors that drove the market’s growth in the second and third quarters of 2020 will continue driving demand in Q4 2020 as well. Due to the strong demand witnessed across the region earlier in the year, inventory levels among the channels remains very low. As a result, vendors are expected to ship as much as they can to fill the void between demand and supply. However, an ongoing global supply shortage of PC components is expected to act as one of the challenges, since this shortage is negatively impacting the production capacity of several vendors across the globe. Looking further ahead, demand for PCs is expected to remain strong in 2021, while tablet demand will likely suffer — primarily because the large tablet projects witnessed in 2020 are not yet on the horizon for 2021.

According to Charakla