English
According to a Canalys study, as the world transitioned to telecommuting and distance or online learning in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, demand for computers around the world surged.
In 2020, annual shipments of PCs and laptopsnotebooks increased to 302 Million, a 13% rise as compared to shipments in 2019.
According to Grigory Nizovsky, vice president of Acer REET, despite all the economic turmoil, the year 2020 turned out to be the most profitable for the company and the entire IT sector as a whole. According to Nizovsky, the surging demand was powered by increased remote working and distance learning, and also by people seeking entertainment on these devices within the 4 walls of their homes during the lockdowns imposed by the Governments.
In some countries, there is also a rapidly growing segment of Chromebooks - a line of computers with Chrome OS operating system, which is most often used for educational purposes and is gradually gaining popularity in Russia and Kazakhstan. Most IT companies grew 13%, but Acer REET and Apple grew 23% and 28% respectively in 2020. Both of these companies have been and remain leaders in the Kazakhstan market.
At the moment, IT-companies in Kazakhstan have identified several growth areas for themselves. One predominant trend is where we see companies integrating their operations in the field of education while collaborating with the Government. Thus, at the end of 2020, about 70,000 laptops were purchased for schools in Kazakhstan. Forecast is that there will be of purchase another 100,000 Chromebooks in 2021.
Grigory Nizovsky also noted the growing demand for devices for content creation: powerful desktop computers loaded for maximum performance, servers and workstations. Such equipment enables complex calculations and can cope up with the heavy workload arising while conducting say scientific research. Digital education and Virtual Reality are also secondary trends that are lately visible on the horizon; significant discoveries though are not yet predicted in the latter.
