Our figure of the month 06/2021: German IT hardware in low demand despite digitisation push – 18% drop in sales in 2020
Only foreign countries benefit with high import figures
When the Corona pandemic severely curtailed public life last spring, millions of people in Germany were forced to work, study or pass the time at home. Demand for notebooks and desktop PCs as well as peripheral devices such as webcams, headphones and gaming accessories therefore experienced an unexpected renaissance in 2020. Nevertheless, Germany's IT manufacturing sector was unable to benefit from this digitisation surge, losing around 18% in revenue for the year as a whole compared to 2019. In previous years, the industry's revenue level typically ranged between €4.2bn to €4.3bn (around €300–400m per month), whereas in 2020 it only reached just under €3.5bn. In the pandemic months of 2020, monthly sales were only around 250 million euros.
Many buyers chose foreign IT hardware for home office and homeschooling and import figures to Germany rose rapidly: Top importers from China (+13%), South Korea (+24%), Taiwan (+16%) and the USA (+14%) expanded their sales by double-digit percentages.