After a record-breaking year, workstation shipments will slow in 2023

The global desktop and mobile workstation market gained strong momentum in 2022, but it inevitably faced saturation and economic realities at the end of the year. According to IDC, unit shipments in the fourth quarter of 2022 (22Q4) decreased by 22.2% compared to last year as spending on IT devices slowed amid economic problems and the fulfillment of outstanding orders.

Over the entire year, the market still managed to reach a record for deliveries (almost 7.7 million units), which is 2.1% more than the previous record of 7.5 million set in 2021. Unlike the previous year with its unprecedented spread of mobile workstations due to working from home, the growth in 2022 was due to the return to offices. It brought about the need to restore desktop workstations, while the mobile part remained at the same level. However, one constant change driven by COVID-19 is that IDC expects the mobile form factor to be the dominant device of the future in markets where hybrid work is popular.

“From the third quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022, we had four consecutive quarters where shipments exceeded two million devices,” said Jay Chow, head of research at Worldwide Client Devices Tracker. This was far above historical norms and proved instable amid tightening budgets and ongoing inflation. After two years of active procurement, we expect enterprise IT departments to start moving away from endpoints, with procurement likely to decline by 4.2% in 2023. ” This is a small change from our previous forecast, which expected a milder contraction. However, beyond the short-term challenges, we believe that the release of new models, the transition to Windows 11, and other factors should lead to growth from 2024.”