Grace Ashiru
According to a study by International Data Corporation (IDC), workstation shipments in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) dropped sharply in the second half of 2022. This was because there was a lot of business uncertainty at the time.
But as demand picks up, the market will likely bounce back strongly by the end of 2023. IDC’s EMEA Quarterly Workstation Tracker showed that unit sales grew by 26.8 percent year over year in 1H22 but dropped by 15.8 percent in 2H22.
IDC projects that the market will continue to fall by 21% YoY through the first half of 2023, but that growth will return in the second half of the year, with 17% growth in Q4 and 21.3% growth throughout 2024.
The return to growth is likely driven mostly by the need to replace older workstations since maintenance and support contracts can’t put off the refreshment cycle of older workstations for another year.
Growth will also come from a rise in work-from-home rules, more people using mobile workstations, and more people moving to Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Improvements to midrange and high-end ISV-certified desktop workstations will also boost demand. These improvements will add features like DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 to speed up the development of new technologies like AI and machine learning.
