Coronavirus would affect the supply of laptops, monitors and more

TrendForce said this morning that it expects the Coronavirus outbreak to lead to lower-than-expected shipments of notebooks, monitors and other products in the first quarter of 2020 as manufacturers struggle to resume normal operations.

Laptops, video game consoles, smartphones and monitors, the most affected by the Coronavirus

The research firm predicted that numerous product categories, from smartphones and smart watches to laptops and monitors, will ship fewer units than originally anticipated. The actual change in his forecast varied from category to category.

Smartwatches are expected to take the brunt, for example, with a revised forecast of 12.1 million units shipped instead of 14.4 million. TVs are expected to experience a drop in sales, but it won't be as steep: TrendForce predicted a 4.5% drop from 48.8 million to 46.6 million units.

Other categories landed somewhere between those extremes. The decreases in laptops (12.3%), video game consoles (10.1%) and monitors (5.2%) stand out. All three were expected to be affected by manufacturing delays or component shortages.

TrendForce was not alone in predicting supply issues for notebook manufacturers. DigiTimes said last Friday that laptop (and smartphone and semiconductor) manufacturers were struggling to resume normal operations due to the Coronavirus outbreak.

Visit our guide on the best laptops on the market

The only category TrendForce didn't seem to care about was memory products. The companies stored memory in anticipation of the Chinese New Year, which helped, as does the highly automated nature of these factories and their shipping authorizations.

The good news is that TrendForce believes that most of these product categories today will be able to recover quickly from their problems in the first quarter. Assuming, of course, that the Coronavirus outbreak will resolve sooner rather than later, we hope that it does.