A thousand so-called virtual exhibitors instead of 5 as it was in the previous real terms, an incredible and partly useless amount of webinars, virtual events, very tiring interviews, bad audio and video… The CES 2021, the great caravansary of domestic and non-domestic technologies, opened its doors at Vegas on Monday the 11th and will close them on Friday the 14th. More than the news, where the Koreans triumph once again, it is worth taking stock of how the COVID-19 has affected the sector, then, after discussing the damage or gains that the pandemic has caused, we will review the novelty. Here are the final results with trends and forecasts.
2020 has not collapsed and 2021 will be a boom. According to GFK, the global market for technological products proved to grow at 2020 +2,5% in value, with a total of 1,050 trillion euro e in particular telecommunications (+3%), small appliances (+8%) and large appliances (+2%) withstood the impact of the global lockdown, driving demand. Smartphones are bad with the exception of Asia where they are growing sharply, while sales of IT products for office automation and general consumer technology products appear to have remained stable compared to last year. Driving the growth, offsetting the collapses of the markets of Western countries was Asia, which exceeded 43 percent of global turnover.
Simply amazing the strong demand for small appliances, also driven by emerging markets. However, there are different interpretations of the final balances of the various sectors since data collection companies often have different methodologies and, consequently, different final balances. The trends, however, are quite in agreement: 2020 has not gone as badly as feared at the beginning of the year. And as for 2021, the heads of the research and data collection centers on the one hand advise us to be cautious but, on the other hand, they are struggling to hold back a unanimous enthusiasm: 2021 will be a record year.
Smartphone, Samsung beats all. Who has suffered the most from the production shutdown of Chinese factories due to the Coronavirus? Phone giants like Apple or Huawei as most of their smartphones just come out of Chinese factories. He suffered a lot less Samsung which moved part of the production to Vietnam at the time and in 2020 returned to the top of the rankings. He was thus able to prepare an organized launch of the long-awaited jewel, the Galaxy S20. Moreover, Samsung does not only manufacture smartphones like its two competitors but a complete range of domestic technology that has allowed it to balance its accounts in 2020. Something that didn't happen for Apple and not even for Huawei which, among other things, also suffered from the closure of the many stores in China. For Apple, the Chinese market is worth 15 to 18 percent. Hauwei even had to sell the Honor luxury division to the Chinese consortium Zhixin New Information Technology also due to the Trumpian war on tariffs.
Production and logistics, bad. Smartphone production and purchases have plummeted (by 11 percent and 20 percent in the first six months, according to TrenderForce and Gartner) while notebooks and even laptops have done very well for smart working and remote lessons. The sell-out of the former registered a +22,5 percent, an excellent result even if customs problems and slow transport are hindering the sell-in. 2021, according to experts gathered in Las Vegas, will certainly see a improvement due to the progressive replacement of old appliances and the growing increase in demand from emerging countries.
But 2021 will be positive. A + is expected9 percent (1,36 billion sets) in the next 12 months for smartphone production and continued growth in notebook sales. At the virtual CES, notebook brands such as HP, Lenovo and Dell presented models with finally better audio. A curiosity: the LED industry (which has extremely varied destinations) which suffered a lot in 2020, will see an increase in demand in 2021 also because the pandemic is stimulating the sales of appliances for home gardening and horticulture. It will certainly go better for the 4K TV market where the war between the big Koreans, LG and Samsung, has become heated.
