Sales of ruggedized PCs were seriously hit by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but are expected to begin to recover in 2021 as enterprises will resume procurement with COVID-19 vaccines to be gradually available, according to market observers.
Compared to regular consumer PCs, which enjoyed strong sales fueled by the stay-at-home economy in 2020, demand for ruggedized PCs stagnated as enterprises cut their expenses to limit the pandemic's impact.
However, ruggedized PC brands that had the support of government procurement orders were a bit better off.
Getac is currently a global top-3 brand of ruggedized PCs with the sales of such computers contributing around 46% of its overall revenues in 2020, about the same percentage as in 2019; however, its whole-year 2020 revenues went up 3.28% on year to arrive at NT$27.84 billion.
Getac originally expected the business to enjoy a robust growth in 2020, but the pandemic stalled its shipments of the products.
With the automotive industry, a major revenue contributor to Getac, having seen orders return since the second half 2020, the market observers expect Getac's ruggedized PC shipments to the carmakers to ramp up in 2021.
Getac's ruggedized PC orders from governments of North America and Europe for police and other public work were little affected by the pandemic during 2020 and are expected to remain stable in 2021.
Getac is also cooperating with Microsoft and Intel to develop new solutions such as the Veretos smart surveillance system and Getac AI defect inspection system that is based on Intel's OpenVINO platform.
Getac also had 49% of its 2020 revenues coming from compartment parts and automotive components. The company's strong sales of compartment parts were mainly generated by brisk demand for notebooks, while revenues from automotive components have already been rising since the third quarter of 2020, the company said.
Demand for ruggedized PCs to resume regular growths in 2021
Photo: Digitimes file photo
