Despite Sanctions, Russians Still Obtaining Latest PCs From Major Brands
Most of the world’s renowned PC brands left Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Despite this, the country continues to receive Apple, Dell and HP badged PCs through gray market imports. According to CNews, foreign-controlled brands dominated over 90% of Russia’s PC market last year, with only 9% coming from local brands. Interestingly, CPU sales remained flat in 2022, although neither AMD nor Intel officially shipped products to Russia, reports Kommersant.
According to the cited GS Group data, Chinese brands remained the top PC vendors — including Lenovo and Huawei — in Russia in 2022, with a market share of about 38%. On the other hand, Taiwanese vendors – such as MSI, Acer and Asus – captured a 35% share of the Russian PC market, while PC OEMs originating in the US (Apple, Dell, HP, etc.) controlled about 19% of the Russian market in the in 2022, up from 36% in 2021. In contrast, Russian vendors provided 9% of PCs sold in the country, up from 4% in 2021 and 3% in 2022.
While the majority of well-known American, Chinese and Taiwanese PC makers officially left Russia after it started the war against Ukraine, their products now flow to Russia via other countries, including Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, to name but a few to name. PCs with badges from domestic PC vendors are mainly produced in China as barebones, officially shipped to the country, and configured on site. While their popularity is growing, that doesn’t mean the country is expanding its computer production. Instead, some companies have started selling PCs more aggressively under their own brands.
GS Group does not disclose how many PCs will be sold in Russia in 2022. Meanwhile, analysts at Marvel, a major distributor in the country, estimated that PC sales in the country reached 1.18 million units in the first half of the year. While it’s hard to say how many units were shipped in the second half of the year as many brands have left, it’s safe to assume that Russia’s PC TAM will have surpassed two million units in 2022.
Interestingly, but based on Federal Customs Service numbers, only about half of the CPUs powering these systems were legally shipped into the country.
Kommersant reports that about 1.027 million CPUs were shipped to Russia in 2022. About 782,000 of these were made by Intel (up 9% year-on-year), 143,000 were AMD-branded (2x down from 2021), while another 102,000 were developed by other vendors, likely including some Chinese names.