The sale of PCs in the third quarter of the year fell nearly 20% compared to a year ago, the largest drop in decades and the fourth straight quarter of year-over-year declines, according to preliminary research by two analyst firms.

The surge in PC sales created by the pandemic and the tremendous uptick in hybrid and remote work is over and no longer adding to computer sales. Back-to-school PC purchases also showed “disappointing results, despite massive promotions and price drops, due to a lack of need as many consumers had purchased new PCs in the last two years,” according to Mikako Kitagawa, a director analyst at Gartner.

On the business side, geopolitical upheavals, such as the war in Ukraine, and economic uncertainties “led to more selective IT spending, and PCs were not at the top of the priority list,” Kitagawa added.

Globally, PC sales fell a whopping 19.5% in the third quarter of 2022 — the largest decline since Gartner began tracking sales in the mid-1990s. Research firm IDC pegged the year-over-year drop at 15%, and echoed Gartner’s take on the issues effecting sales, according the firm’s Worldwide Tracker.

“During the peak of the pandemic, many consumers, schools, and business sought new PCs and that surge has been largely fulfilled,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers.

The US PC market dropped 17.3% in the third quarter of 2022, the fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year shipment decline. Slow laptop sales drove the overall US market down, while desktop sales showed modest growth — driven by pent-up demand among businesses as well as the public sector, according to Gartner.

“Inflation is the biggest concern in the US. market, but smaller businesses are showing relative optimism about macroeconomic conditions,” Kitagawa said. “While laptop demand among large enterprises sharply decreased in the third quarter of 2022, small and midsize businesses did not show as steep of a drop.”

The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions were hit particularly hard by plummeting sales, decreasing 26.4% year-over-year in the third quarter to 17 million units – the steepest decline among all regions, according to Gartner. It was the third negative quarter for the EMEA PC market following a boom at the start of the pandemic.

Globally, shipments of PCs totaled 74.3 million, according to IDC. (Gartner pegged global sales of PCs at 67.9 million.)

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