FIGURES DURING the first flush of the pandemic were up by as much as 26 percent. The year after saw a small rise, but 2022 saw those gains come crashing back down. Some analysts claim it’s the biggest such decline in the history of the x86 market, with year-onyear shipments of processors down by 21 percent from 2022. PC shipments fell by 28 percent in the last quarter of 2022, which is 67 million fewer systems. Is this actually bad news? Not really. The pandemic spike couldn’t last, especially with the production problems it created. This year’s figures are expected to level out by the second half of the year and to have returned to a level we might have expected if the pandemic hadn’t happened at all by the end of the year. The business market, which has delayed many PC purchases, is expected to return fully by 2024.