2019 feels like forever ago now, thanks to a barrage of world-changing events bludgeoning us around the proverbial heads year after year. This played out in the PC and broader tech industry to the tune of chip shortages and a general industry slowdown. Now, judging from some industry reports about motherboard shipments, it looks like the PC market (and therefore the PC gaming market) could be back in business.
Digitimes (via IT Home) reports that, according to "industry sources," motherboard shipments are set to recover in the second half of 2024. This is based on previous shipping information and estimates for 2024. Tallying up the numbers relayed, it looks like the four major motherboard vendors (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock) might reach a sizeable 33,700,000 motherboards shipped by year's end.
This coincides with other positive developments in the PC and component industry, such as PC sales steadily increasing and Q4 2023's GPU sales seeing a 32% year-on-year increase. Now, we can add motherboards to the list of PC components seemingly back in healthy waters.
To put these developments in context, just two years ago, in 2022, the big four motherboard manufacturers shipped 30% fewer motherboards than in 2021, demonstrating the protracted downswing influenced by pandemic-induced chip shortages and post-pandemic under-demand for tech. Yes, there was a boom during 2021 and 2021, but the trough in 2022's PC and component market dipped far below pre-pandemic levels.
After a topsy-turvy few years, we could all do with some normalcy in the industry, and the projected motherboard shipment figures thankfully look like a return to this. The data that IT Home relays shows an estimated return to the level of motherboard shipments we had back in 2019 before any of the past years' big market swings.
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Much of this, by the way, might be to do with upcoming Intel Arrow Lake and AMD Zen 5 CPUs, the former of which are likely to hit the market later in the year while the latter are practically on our doorstep. These processors, perhaps crucially as far as the market's concerned, will feature beefy NPUs for AI workloads, which is all the rage right now.
What does this mean for us PC gamers? Well, a healthier PC market certainly makes for a healthier PC gaming market. And basic economics tells us that more supply tends to equal lower prices, provided demand doesn't also skyrocket.
Market improvements in one area, such as with motherboards, also tends to knock into other areas. For example, if more companies are buying motherboards, then more companies are probably buying all the other components to slot into these motherboards, which means more demand, more money for manufacturers, more production, and so on. Y'know, rising tides and all that.
Call me an optimist, then, but I think good things could be in store for PC gamers in the market for new hardware over the coming years.
