| Consumer Segment: Profitability Per Product Improves
| Laptop share expands across individual markets
Computing devices will evolve into WaaS.

Although domestic PC shipments declined in 2018 compared to the previous year, profitability improved.

According to a domestic PC market research analysis released by Korea IDC on the 11th, domestic PC shipments in 2018 decreased by 6.9% year-on-year to 1.94 million desktops, 2.31 million laptops, and 4.26 million total units.
By product, convertible notebooks offering note-taking functions were particularly popular, while ultra-slim notebooks are becoming thinner and thinner thanks to low-power processors and improvements in design processes.

Gaming PCs recorded double-digit year-over-year growth, despite a shortage of graphics cards due to cryptocurrency mining at the beginning of the year and a shortage of Intel processors in the second half of the year, driven by the release of games requiring high graphics performance, including Battlegrounds, and the increasing number of gamers enjoying them.

The consumer sector shipped 2.35 million units, a 7.7% decrease year-on-year. However, the sales decline was 4.0%, lower than demand, due to the increased proportion of mainstream and premium products, and profitability per product is analyzed to have improved.
The public sector expanded its investment in IT equipment retooling, including large-scale bidding and network separation, shipping 340,000 units, up 2.1% year-on-year. Meanwhile, the education sector saw a 12.7% drop in PC shipments, driven by a massive purchase of tablets for digital textbooks in the second half of the year. Nonetheless, the share of laptops in both public and educational settings increased year-on-year to 11.3% and 21.7%, respectively, indicating a shift toward adopting a mobility environment to increase productivity.

The corporate sector shipped 1.29 million units, a 7.4% decrease year-on-year, with the decline in desktops being particularly large due to reduced investment by small and medium-sized enterprises.
According to IDC Korea Device Research Director Kwon Sang-jun, “According to IDC’s ‘Future of Work Outlook,’ by 2020, more than half of the world’s workers will be reorganized into millennials who are accustomed to using digital devices,” and “In addition to desktops and laptops, various devices such as tablets, smartphones, AR/VR devices, and smart speakers are being used in the workplace, and the use of AI is increasing.”

Accordingly, he added, “Computing devices must also evolve to accommodate diverse work styles, and ultimately, from a workspace perspective, the concept of workspace as a service will evolve.”