The past few years have been challenging for PC, hardware, and tech-related industries. Ongoing COVID-19 restrictions are still having supply chain impacts to this day, resulting in component shortages tricking amongst countless industries. Chip shortages have throttled CPU and GPU production, while scalpers, miners, and gougers haven’t let off, either. The recent COVID-19 lockdowns in China, where Shanghai witnessed draconian lockdown measures, certainly didn’t help the global situation.

However, slowly but surely, things are starting to reflect a sense of normalcy to how things used to be pre-pandemic. PC shipments dipped 4.3 percent year over year in Q2 2021 to reach 78.7 million units, according to Counterpoint’s latest report, a global industry analysis firm headquartered in Asia.

Lenovo maintained its spot as the top global vendor based on 18.2 million units shipped. Albeit, that’s down about 9.5 percent compared to the same period exactly one year ago. It’s worth mentioning Lenovo performed well during the pandemic largely due to in-house manufacturing and operation control, directly combating logistic and supply chain issues plaguing other competitor companies.

HP captured the second spot with 15.9 million PCs shipped, about a 15.4 percent year-over-year dip. Dell and Apple saw shipments increase by 1.5 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively.

It’s a good bet that component shortages are going to ease in H2 2022. Since late 2021, demand-supply gaps have been shrinking, signaling an impending end to supply tightness across the broader ecosystem. That’s good news for every related industry, including PC gaming to current-generation consoles looking to reach as many consumers as possible.