PC Displays May Get Cheaper as Sales Slow

After five consecutive quarters of rising display sales, fuelled by a shift to work-from-home (WFH) caused by the pandemic, sales have started to decline in the third quarter of 2021, according to IDC. While this is not good news for suppliers, this is a good thing for consumers because as demand slows down, prices may decline too. 

Demand for PC monitors skyrocketed in the first half of 2020 as people started to buy LCDs for laptops. This demand continued to rise mainly due to WFH, but now shipments have returned to their normal patterns, according to market researchers from IDC, at least according to the numbers, which may lead to a lower pressure on the supply chain and consecutive drop of prices. May does not mean will though. 

“We think about 25 million gaming AIBs will be sold in (JPR gets the data from companies like AMD and Nvidia, not from retailers) 2021, said Peddie. “Gamers using notebooks and integrated graphics don’t usually invest much in a monitor, especially a gaming monitor. So I think it would be safe to guestimate that 12 to 15 million gamers in 2021 invested in what would be characterized as a gaming monitor.”

“Covid-19 has caused a lot of people to upgrade their system, and even if they do not have a dedicated gaming PC, they equip their PC for gaming to the limit of their budget,” said Jon Peddie, the head of Jon Peddie Research.