Games are moving to the office – Newspaper Kommersant No. 197 (7398) dated 10/24/2022

The share of sales of gaming monitors in Russia for nine months increased to 50% of the market as a whole. A year ago, the figure was 40%, retailers specify. Demand for gaming laptops at the same time remained at the level of last year: their sales amounted to 15% in pieces of all devices. Interest in gaming technology, according to experts, is due to the fact that it “helps to cope with stress.” But devices have also begun to be more actively used for work purposes – sufficiently powerful gaming laptops are replacing premium brands that have left the Russian Federation.

In January-June, the demand for gaming monitors increased in Russia, Kommersant was told in M. Video-Eldorado. If for the same period in 2021 40% of all devices sold were gaming devices, this year it is already 50%. At the same time, the share of gaming laptops in the market did not change, amounting to 15% in unit terms and 25% in monetary terms. According to M.Video-Eldorado, in just nine months, 320,000 gaming laptops and about 400,000 gaming monitors were sold, the total market for gaming devices amounted to about 50 billion rubles. The Chinese Thunderobot from Haier Group became the leader among manufacturers of gaming laptops within the range of the retailer. Among other popular vendors in M.Video-Eldorado named Asus, Lenovo, HP, Acer, MSI, without disclosing their shares.

The growth in the share of sales of gaming laptops and monitors is confirmed in the Positronics network. “Due to the shortage of video cards, it was easier and cheaper for consumers to purchase a gaming laptop than to assemble a gaming computer from scratch,” says Alexei Gribovsky, general manager of the Positronics network. According to him, MSI became the leader among such laptops this year, in the past it was Asus. Demand for gaming laptops and monitors is steadily growing, confirms Roman Ovsienko, Head of Notebooks at diHouse (part of the Lanit group).

“Gaming can be considered one of the anti-stress formats in the current conditions, in addition, laptops that can be classified as gaming in terms of technical parameters are often bought for both work and home tasks,” said the director of the Home Office and Photo cluster, M.Video -Eldorado “Oleg Reznikov.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, many foreign brands announced the suspension of official product deliveries to Russia, we are talking about Asus, Dell, HP, Apple and others. As a result, laptop sales fell by 22% in July (see Kommersant dated August 25). The equipment of the departed brands is partially imported through parallel import channels, Kommersant’s interlocutors among specialized retailers specify, but deliveries in terms of volume are not comparable with those that were a year ago. At the same time, new brands began to appear in Russia, in particular, the Chinese Haier launched sales of the already mentioned Thunderobot laptops and peripherals, including monitors under the Machenike brand (see Kommersant dated August 31).

In 2021, quarterly deliveries of laptops to Russia as a whole amounted to about 600 thousand devices, and this year the figure fell by 2.5 times, says Alexander Surkov, head of the GS Group analytical center: “At the same time, about 80% of deliveries accounted for the top five vendors (Asus, MSI, Lenovo, etc.), so the departure of even one brand changes the market a lot.” Against this background, in his opinion, the chances of second-tier brands from China and Russia have greatly increased, but the requirements of buyers for laptops have remained the same, and budget models do not always meet them. As a result, the expert explains, the demand for models of comparable power from the gaming segment has grown: “Gaming laptops, which are always more powerful, have replaced the segment of premium brands that have left the country.”

According to Roman Ovsienko, the gaming market has not yet reached its peak: “After the official departure of the main world players from Russia, Chinese vendors are actively developing the vacated promising niche.” Kommersant’s interlocutor in the electronics market considers it possible to continue growing Haier’s share due to the fact that three of its laptop brands will be presented in the Russian Federation at once.

Timofey Kornev