Southern Africa's personal computing devices (PCD) market, which comprises desktops, notebooks and tablets in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, saw shipments decline 12.2 percent year on year (YoY) in Q3 2020, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). Its report says that the desktop market was the worst hit during the quarter, with a YoY decline of 60 percent, while the tablet and notebook markets declined 16.5 percent and 2.4 percent respectively. Shipments of gaming notebooks increased 3.8 percent as consumers sought entertainment during the lockdown.

Grace Munyi, a research analyst at IDC, says lockdown measures saw South Africa’s GDP fall by over 16 percent between the first and second quarters of the year, with GDP down 51 percent YoY in Q2. This represents South Africa's steepest economic contraction since 1960 and dwarfed its 2009 global financial crisis slowdown of 6.1 percent. The weakening of the rand's exchange rate against the U.S. dollar, together with a shortage of forex, further weakened PCD shipments into the region.

Despite the adverse effects of the pandemic, work-from-home policies and distance learning kept demand for PCDs going. Employers sought to equip their staff with devices to use at home and parents bought devices for their children to facilitate online education during school closures. The gradual easing of the lockdown measures eventually saw mobility resume with some offices re-opening, thus sustaining demand for notebooks and tablet devices.

In the PC sector, HP dominated, accounting for 24.7 percent of total PC shipments during the third quarter. Lenovo came second with 23.7 percent followed by Dell and Acer Group with respective shares of 14.7 percent and 14.6 percent. In the tablet sector, Lenovo led with a 13.8 percent share of shipments in Q3. Samsung came second with 10.5 percent and Apple third with 8.5 percent.