While the recent surge in PC and tablet demand still has some legs, research firm IDC said it expects the market to decline in 2021 as businesses and consumers continue to deal with the economy uncertainty brought on by the pandemic.
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to bring a host of challenges to most vendors, especially those whose manufacturing sites are in China and neighboring countries, including the Philippines and Indonesia.
Worldwide spending on artificial intelligence (AI) is forecast to double over the next four years, growing from $50.1 billion in 2020 to more than $110 billion in 2024.
The report, which was conducted by analyst firm IDC for tech giant Lenovo, noted that many educational institutions felt that the mass migration into distributed, online learning during the pandemic was launched very quickly, without the opportunity for change management processes and operational best practices.
While this year's growth is somewhat slower than previous years due to the economic impact of Covid-19, research firm IDC said investment in AI will recover quickly.
As restrictions around the world tightened in the first few weeks of the quarter, demand for notebooks continued to grow to maintain continuity of business and schooling for many communities.
IDC said the Covid-19 pandemic is contributing to this figure by causing an abrupt increase in the number of work from home employees and changing the mix of data being created to a richer set of data that includes video communication and a tangible increase in the consumption of downloaded and streamed video.
The drop comes as no surprise as Q1 marked the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and the peak of the lockdowns in China, which extended to the rest of the world by the end of the quarter.
