Analyst firm IDC projected smartphone shipments will climb 5.5% this year while PCs will grow by 18% even amid chip shortages.
The improvement in both segments comes after smartphones suffered in 2020 while PCs grew substantially on the work from home and study from home trend during the pandemic.
“PC demand will experience meaningful tailwinds” in 2021, said Ryan Reith, program vice president at IDC. Growth in PCs reached nearly 13% in 2020 compared to 2019 and will grow again by 18.2% in 2021, reaching 357 million PCs.
However, there are supply concerns for both the smartphone and PC industries around a shortage of integrated circuits, IDC said. Assuming no further disruptions, PC supplies and manufacturing capacity should reach a level of supply meeting demand by mid-year.
For smartphones, a huge push by smartphone makers to produce more devices based on strong performance in the last quarter of 2020 “may create some temporary challenges in production,” said IDC senior analyst Sangeetika Srivastava. Larger phone makers might do better at getting supplies of components than smaller smartphone makers.
“IDC continues to see strong demand for smartphones,” added Nabila Popal, research director at IDC.
IDC hasn’t calculated how well the smartphone and PC markets would perform in 2021 if there wasn’t any shortage of chips. However, IDC analyst Jitesh Ubrani said on the PC side that if there weren’t any shortages, demand would “certainly be high enough to consumer any additional units produced.”
In the first quarter, IDC forecast smartphone shipments will grow nearly 14% year-over-year. China and the U.S. will grow 5% and 3.5% for the full year, despite a 10% to 11% decline in 2020 compared to 2019 amid the pandemic. Globally, about 1.35 billion smartphones will ship in 2021.
Phones with 5G capability will be the driving factor, including Apple’s full 5G iPhone 12 line up. For 2021, 5G smartphones will account for more than 40% of global smartphone volume, growing to nearly 70% in 2025.
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