Tablets have seen a resurgence during quarantine, and laptops are still the top device among the populace for getting work done. But don’t count out the desktop PC yet. As part of its overall Global Consumer Survey, our partners at Statista asked almost 2,500 desktop owners (age 18 to 64) about what brand of desktop they use.
Even in the wake of Apple announcing new iMacs, it’s clear that Cupertino is a distant third-place desktop PC provider. Apple’s 13% of the market doesn’t come close to touching the 33% of the leader, Dell, or 31% of the market going to HP.
Those numbers line up to results we typically see in our Readers’ Choice survey. Last year, Dell garnered 27% of the total responses, and HP had 19%, so those are definitely the top-two brands by number of users. (Well, actually second and third… this being PCMag, our top 30% of respondents use self-built desktop PCs.)
A high user number of didn’t and usually doesn’t translate to great scores for those companies in our survey, though—Dell was well behind Apple, Alienware (which Dell happens to own), and Asus for overall satisfaction. HP was at the bottom of the heap for satisfaction. Apple, our typical survey winner, is also in third place as vendor of choice for 7% of users in our survey.
It’s very interesting to see Microsoft register at all as a desktop PC brand within Statista’s info. Microsoft’s entries tend to be high-end workstations such as the Surface Studio 2. Yet MS listed ahead of brands including Acer, Lenovo, Alienware, and Asus.
Statista’s link to the recently updated IDC data on Personal Computing Devices Market Share indicate that, to no one’s surprise, desktops are not that hot compared to laptops, and they’ve even fallen behind slate tablets. The projections through the year 2024 don’t show that trend changing—and desktops will likely fall. For the actual year 2020, sales were pretty flat, even dropping from a high 23.7 million shipments in the third quarter of 2019 down to 21.5 million in Q4 2020. All other devices (laptops, tablets, and detachable tablets) went up year to year—except workstations, which did 1.6 million in both fourth quarters.
For more details, check out Statista’s and IDC’s reports.
(Interested in rating your desktop PC? Our 2021 survey is happening right now, so click over to rate desktop PCsrate desktop PCs you use for home, work, and gaming! Survey runs through May 2, 2021.)
