The regional market for personal computing devices (PCD) including desktops, notebooks, workstations, and tablets, will slump to its lowest levels in a decade next year, according to the latest insights from IDC. The IDC Quarterly PCD Tracker forecasts overall PCD shipments for the region of 19.6 million units in 2019, the lowest total since 16.5 million units were shipped in 2009.
“The region’s largest market, Turkey, has seen its currency weaken to the lowest levels in history against the U.S. dollar, causing the prices of imported goods from multinational brands to rise significantly,” says Fouad Charakla, IDC’s senior research manager for client devices in the META region.
“This has had a significant negative impact on the purchasing power of end users in the country and will be a key inhibitor of growth over the coming quarters. Currency issues have also worsened in Iran due to the tightening of U.S. sanctions against the country, meaning it is now far more difficult for market players in Iran to make payments in U.S. dollars for supplies of imported PCs and tablets.” Charakla added. “Turkey and Iran were not the only sore points for the META PCD market in Q3 2018, with the UAE also suffering a significant decline in shipments.”
The research company expects a shortage of supply of Intel CPUs in the market to kick in from Q4 2018. This shortage is expected to last through the first half of 2019 and will primarily impact entry-level CPUs such as Atom and Celeron. On a more positive note, IDC expects another massive delivery of slate tablets into Egypt’s education sector during the final quarter of 2018. The first installment of around 100,000 tablets was delivered in Q3 2018.
