Yup, PC monitor sales have cratered too and are getting worse
PC monitor sales were down 5.9% in 2022. If that doesn't sound too catastrophic, the final quarter of 2022 was down 18.3% compared to the same period in 2021 and added up to the worst quarter on record. So yeah, the latest data is pretty ugly.
This is all according to the market data cork sniffers at analyst outfit IDC. Total PC monitor units shipped in Q4 2022 was just over 30.5 million units, the lowest number since IDC began tracking the market in 2008.
The dip in the PC monitor market mirrors that of CPUs and graphics cards, of course. IDC said the contraction was expected on two counts. First, the patchy global economic environment. Second, an inevitable downturn following a spike in shipments to meet pandemic driven demand for work-at-home and gaming hardware.
IDC predicts 2023 will actually be worse again overall with a further 9.8% contraction before the market recovers in 2024. Taken in the round and looking at IDC's graph, the dip in 2022 and 2023 is pretty mild, especially when you consider the big spike during the pandemic.
So, let's not panic. 120 million PC monitors are still going to find homes in 2023. The world is still spinning.
Incidentally, if you were wondering who the big names in PC monitors are, IDC has numbers for that, too. Dell is by far the biggest player, with around 22.5% of the market, with HP second on about 12% and Samsung, Lenovo and TPV close behind.
Of course, that's the whole PC monitor market, not just gaming panels. Anywho, a bit of a dip is not a huge surprise. And as we recently discovered with ASRock's new 34-inch ultrawide panel, really good gaming monitors don't need to be uber expensive.