More evidence of PC recovery as Compal expects PC and Notebook sales to grow 10% in 2017

There has been an ongoing rumble of a resurgent PC market as users move to thin, light, and more mobile notebooks and also more powerful PCs for gaming and VR.

Now we have more evidence of the shift, as PC and notebook ODM Compal Electronics president Ray Chen announced that they expect to grow their notebooks and desktop shipments 10% year on year in 2017, to 40 million units.

The company forecast the improved outlook at their investor’s conference on March 28th.

He noted that he expected DRAM and SSD shortage to remain this year, in part driven by real shortages as the market switch away from HDD, and also due to DRAM makers reducing supply in order to hike prices.

The IDC has previously forecast a 21% growth of detachable tablets by 2021  and also a 0.8% growth in notebooks over the same period.  Digitimes have however reported from their supply sources that top notebook vendors have already seen sales up 22% YoY in February 2017.  Even Microsoft saw Windows OEM sales increase 5% YoY in their latest financials.

Hopefully we will see the PC market move on from simply no longer shrinking to once again becoming a vibrant part of the smart computing device ecosystem.