What They Say
IDC put out a press release highlighting the strong sales of desktop monitors in 2020, which saw 16.9% growth from 2019, the highest it has ever recorded (since 2008). 2020 Was the Strongest Growth Year on Record for PC Monitors, According to IDC. The release has the detailed tables of brand shares for Q4 and for 2020 overall.
What We Think
I tracked the European market for monitors from 2000 to 2020 and this was certainly a strong result although the early ’00s were good years as the world adopted the flat panel monitors, even though they were relatively expensive.
What I particularly noted was that Dell managed to achieve 19.6% for the quarter and 19.3% share over the year. For Q4, the result was especially strong, with its nearest competitor, HP, at 12.7%. Over the year, TPV was the nearest at 14.1%. I have long thought that Dell does better in the monitor market because it really develops the display business somewhat separately from the overall PC business, whereas HP has tended to see displays more as part of the system. Of course, both do both things, but Dell seems to have better focus.
TPV has managed, by dint of its sheer scale in manufacturing, to avoid the problem that hit BenQ. In 2007, BenQ came under big pressure from HP and Dell because of aggression by the firm with its own brand. It forced BenQ’s hand and the company set up Qisda as a separate company to look after the OEM customers. TPV, which sells as AOC and as a licensee of the Philips brand in a number of markets, TPV since I first met the firm, had always pursued a volume-based strategy and has been making somewhere around half the monitors in the market for a long time. I heard customers say, I’d love to be able to stop buying from them, but they have such capacity! (BR)
The IDC monitor forecast may be impacted by driver shortages and other supply side constraints.
