With the global economy in a bit of a shaky state as countries around the world respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s probably no surprise that Gartner is predicting a significant drop in PC, tablet, and mobile phone shipments for 2020.
What is a little surprise is that the dip is only expected to be 13.6 percent. But analysts say that with millions of people working from home, there are millions of workers and students looking to improve their home offices with some new gear. So PC shipments are expected to fall only 10.5 percent, while mobile phone shipments are expected to dip by 14.6 percent as people decide to put off new phone purchases by at least a few months.
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
- Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Device Shipments to Decline 14% in 2020 [Gartner]
Gartner predicts global “device” shipments including PCs, tablets, and smartphones to fall nearly 14-percent in 2020 (compared to 2019) due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It would have been worse if people weren’t snatching up work-from-home hardware. - HBO Max went live today… [USA Today]
…but the new streaming service is not available for Roku or Amazon Fire TV yet, two of the biggest streaming platforms. You can sign up for a 7-day free trail at HBOMax.com. Subscriptions are $15/month after that. - Former HTC CEO Peter Chou reveals his next project: a social 5G VR headset [Engadget]
XRSpace is a new virtual reality platform founded by former HTC CEO Peter Chou. So far it seems to consist of a standalone VR headset that’s smaller, lighter, and a little more powerful than the competition, plus a social-focused take on VR experiences. - Fujitsu Launches 14 New Models of Enterprise Notebooks, Tablets and Workstations [Fujitsu]
Aimed at enterprise users, these new models include devices with screen sizes ranging from 10.1 inches to 15.6 inches. - Xiaomi RedmiBook 13, 14, and 16 [GizmoChina]
Xiaomi launched RedmiBook 13, 14, and 16 inch laptops with Ryzen 4000U series processors and prices ranging from 3799 yuan ($530) to 4,999 yuan ($700). - Fan silent mode on WIN MAX [GPD/Reddit]
The GPD Win Max mini gaming laptop has dual fans which do a great job of keeping the laptop from getting too hot. But they can also be pretty noisy under load. Now GPD says it’ll add a “Silent Mode” option that limits the fan speed to 30-percent. - Save all the songs [Spotify]
Spotify starts rolling out an update that lets you save more than 10K items to your library (including songs and albums). But you still can’t add more than 10K items to a playlist or download more than 10K songs for offline listening. - Moto G Fast leaked by Motorola [GSM Arena]
Moto G Fast will be a mid-range phone with 3GB RAM, octa-core CPU, and three rear cameras according to a video posted (and then removed) by Motorola.
Lilbits articles are compiled from short news snippets we post to social media throughout the week. Up until now, I’d been giving these articles numbers so that each Lilbits roundup would have a unique title and URL. But after 404 of these, it occurred to me that this was silly, so I’m switching to using dates in the headline. This starts with today’s article… and continues for as long as I remember that I decided to use dates instead of numbers.
You can keep up on the latest headlines by following Liliputing on Twitter and Facebook.
Don’t trust forecast with a decimal place added to them to make them look scientifically accurate!
The forecasts are just educated guesses which have error ranges of +/-50% and the error range for one with an artificial decimal place is more likely +/- 200%!
Why did the analyst think the device shipment decline would have been worse without the lockdowns? At least that’s what’s in the linked Gartner article. Or did they somehow think that working from home for those who only need a notebook to do their job was not possible (ie. they don’t know what the Internet and technology is)?
I think it was just badly worded. I believe what they really meant to say is that the drop in sales for this size of drop in economic activity would have been much worse except for the surge in purchasing because of the all the companies and organizations working from home and engaging in distance learning, etc.
I have no idea if Gartner has ever modeled forecasts for a pandemic, but they will certainly have some idea of what happens in more “normal” circumstances were the economy comes under stress, like in the aftermaths of 9/11 and the financial crisis, and I guess the main point is that things are very different this time.
At least for now. I honestly don’t see much hope of getting past this crisis without a severe global recession.
We’ve halted all tech purchases at our house. Prices have shot up so high that we can no longer afford any of the items on our list. With food prices having done the same….we’re more interested in eating than purchasing a new Nintendo Switch.