The rise in prices for computers over the past 12 months amounted to at least 20%, and only in the first quarter of 2021 – by 10-12%, electronics sellers told Vedomosti. In particular, prices for laptops in Russia in the first quarter of 2021 increased by an average of 10% relative to the last quarter of last year, and if we compare January-March with the same period last year, then by an average of 20-25%, the executive director said. distributor diHouse Andrey Tarasov. The prices for all computer equipment (laptops and desktops) have increased by about the same amount, the marketer of the federal retailer specified.
The rise in prices in the first quarter really amounted to an average of 20% year-on-year, confirms the manager of one of the online trading platforms. Retailers in Russia are now not increasing their margins – prices for gadgets are changing on the side of importers, he says.
For the incomplete I quarter of 2021 (excluding the last weeks of March), the average price of a computer purchased in Russian retail amounted to about $ 730 (about 54,300 rubles at the average exchange rate of the Central Bank for the quarter), follows from the materials of the GfK company, which were read ” Vedomosti “. This is about 20% more than a year ago, and 12% – compared to the IV quarter of 2020. Leading analyst at Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin believes that prices for PCs in Russia are growing faster: “Compared to the last months of 2020 . in the first quarter of 2021, their growth may be at least 20%, and if comparing year to year – 35%. “
However, the statistics of Yandex. Market ”shows that prices for desktops and laptops not only always rise, but sometimes go down. For example, the Lenovo IdeaPad 515 laptop, which cost 63,156 rubles in December, rose to 73,766 rubles in January, and fell to 57,400 rubles in March. Asus VivoBook 15 A543, which in December was sold for an average of 34,778 rubles, in February already cost 38,784 rubles, and now it is offered for a little less than 34,000 rubles.
“The drop in prices for PCs is a local temporary phenomenon associated with a shortage of computers that emerged last year,” explains Dmitry Kravchenko, CEO of Acer in Russia. “Now, PCs ordered by retailers for the New Year holidays are arriving in Russia with a delay, when demand is maximum, they have to be sold.”
The rise in prices for computers is largely due to the shortage of components for their production. “In 2020, due to the rush of demand for PCs, their prices began to rise. Then, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chains for components collapsed – some factories producing them simply closed, “says Kravchenko.
At the beginning of this year, there was a situation on the market when the demand for laptops and other high-tech equipment exceeded supply, which was due to a shortage of components, agrees Natalya Selikhova, head of Ozon Computers and Notebooks: “There was a lack of processors, screens and video cards. Now the supply situation is slightly normalizing, but there is still a shortage of chips. “
Murtazin also notes the crisis of container transportation associated with the pandemic: “The demand for goods from China and Asia in Europe and the United States has grown, respectively, and the demand for sea containers has grown approximately 4 times. Their deficit is aggravated by the fact that during quarantine the recipients do not have time to unload them quickly, and traffic jams are formed. ” According to the data previously cited by the Association of Retail Companies in its letter to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the price of container transportation of goods from China and the countries of Southeast Asia increased in January 2021 by almost 5 times compared to October 2020 and 1.2 times compared to December. Transportation to the Baltic ports has risen 3.1 times compared to October and 1.4 times compared to December 2020.
According to Tarasov, due to the shortage of containers, their cost immediately jumped several times: “Due to downtime with a shortage of containers for transshipment, the time for free stay of cargo in the port began to decrease, which increased the cost of storage.”
Another reason for the rise in prices for computers is the growth of quotations of cryptocurrencies, for the generation (mining) of which video cards are required, says an employee of one of the retailers. Prices for video cards are rising, and since these components are present in every PC, computers as a whole are becoming more expensive.
The shortage of video cards in Russia took shape by the beginning of 2021, when the bitcoin rate broke through the $ 40,000 mark. The demand for video cards for mining increased significantly (some models were impossible to buy at all), and the prices for these components soared 1.5-2 times , computer equipment sellers told Vedomosti earlier.
“In the next two quarters, prices are expected to rise in almost all categories of electronics,” forecasts Nikolai Petrov, head of the digital equipment purchasing group at Cityink. – In the segment of computer technology, this is due to the shortage and increase in the cost of components, as well as the growth in the cost of container transportation.
There are no fundamental reasons for lower prices – there is still a shortage of components in the computer market and it will hardly be possible to overcome it until the third quarter of this year, concludes Kravchenko from Acer.
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