Coronavirus outbreak boosts sales of displays and laptops

The outbreak of the new coronavirus has forced people to work from home, which has led to a surge in sales of computer accessories and products such as keyboards, monitors and laptops, market research firm NPD said in a report on Tuesday.

Affected by the epidemic, people who have to work at home are equipping their home offices with computer equipment, and some of them can get related subsidies from the company.

The surge in PC peripheral sales is a bright spot for companies such as Dell, Samsung, HP, Lenovo and TPV.

And the rise in notebook sales shows that, as far as the PC industry is concerned, the economic downturn may not be as bad as people fear.

In this industry, the two giants, Microsoft and Intel, have surged 18% and 25% from their lows hit in mid-March.

Microsoft warned investors in February that due to the disruption of the supply chain, the company would not be able to meet the quarterly performance guidance for the PC business, including the Windows business, but said at the time that demand was still "strong."

The NPD report shows that computer monitor sales doubled to 80,000 units in the first two weeks of March.

At the same time, notebook, mouse, and keyboard sales also increased by 10%.

In addition, B2B (business-to-business) sales have also increased. The sales of notebooks for businesses in the last week of February increased by 30% year-on-year and 50% in the first two weeks of March. This is because many companies have begun to prepare computers for home office employees  device.

According to the report, B2B display sales were flat year-on-year in early February and increased 40% year-on-year in the first two weeks of March.

There are rumors that computer monitors are in short supply in the United States: someone visited two Best Buy stores, two Staples stores, and a Micro Center computer city on the first weekend of March, and found that computer monitors were sold out.

At the same time, the pace of the mobile revolution is slowing due to wide-ranging segregation, and people no longer use mobile phones for everything but return to their desks to use computers.

The NPD report pointed out that this effect is reflected in the sales performance of mobile phones and their accessories, in which the sales of accessories fell by 14% in the first two weeks of March.