I wonder how much of that is for gaming. The growth and demand for high end gaming parts has been unprecedented. Ie Nvidia's 3080, just about impossible to buy, chaotic launch, and AMD's 5900x - very hot property now.
I had assumed, from a combination of the title and my intuition about 2020, that desktop computing would be enjoying a resurgence. My thinking: many of us are stuck at home and desktop computing is the premium computing experience—especially for enthusiasts, gamers, content creators, engineers, programmers, etc. We're no longer carrying a computer to and from an office each day, so the value of a laptop is diminished. In fact, when my laptop died in April, I didn't replace it for several months because my home workstation is what I'm using every day and I wasn't traveling anywhere.
I suppose enthusiasts don't really count for a big enough market to lift the numbers. Still I would have expected 2020 to be flat on desktop computers, not dramatically down.
For my company, since we didn't want to use a bunch of money to buy new equipment during an economic squeeze, we let the programmers (essentially everyone) take their workstations home, and most did.
* Creatives who need more horsepower than a mobile workstation can provide
* Hourly employees with minimal computing needs who won't use their computer outside of their cubical
Anyone in the middle is better served by a laptop
I don't think it's capturing anything about people who build their own system, so whether or not that market has grown probably isn't reflected in this.
- Some lucky folks took home shiny new hardware from their employers to connect to the office
- Some unlucky folks had to pay out-of-pocket because on their first day working from home they learned Teams doesn't run on a 13 year old Macbook
- And yes, some folks splurged on new hardware for COVID-compliant fun (myself included), but newfound imperatives like having to work from home will more effectively drive sales than a shift in taste