Sales of components for self-repair and assembly of PCs have increased many times in Russia
Source：CNews.ru
From：Taiwan Trade Center, Moscow
Update Time：2022/11/12
In Russia, there is an avalanche-like increase in demand for components for laptops and computers that are required to repair equipment with their own hands or self-assembly of equipment. Retailers for 9 months of 2022 record an increase in sales of video cards, hard drives, cases and processors by 2-4 times, compared to the same period in 2021.
Repair, not buy
Russians have become more active in buying spare parts for self-repair or assembly of computers and laptops, Vedomosti writes with reference to retailers. For 9 months of 2022, sales of video cards, RAM, hard drives, processors and computer cases increased 2-4 times compared to 2021. The most active spare parts were bought in March 2022, M.video-Eldorado clarified.
Representatives of Wildberries confirm to the publication that components in pieces from March to September 2022 began to be bought three times more often, compared with 2021 SSD drives and laptop batteries have become four times more popular. Users also actively purchased thermal pastes for cooling the processor and video cards.
Service centers complain about the lack of spare parts for laptops and computers
In the first six months of 2022, components began to be bought twice as much on Ozon – representatives of the marketplace told CNews about this. Hard drives, network drives, motherboards (twice year-on-year) and Nvidia video cards (more than twice) were popular. The company confirmed that the most feverish demand occurred in March 2022. Russians purchased ready-made system blocks, industrial computers, network gateways and individual processors almost four times more often.
There is also an increase in the secondary market of components (used hardware): representatives of classifieds sites report that sales in March 2022 increased by a third compared to the same month of 2021. In total, from February to September 2022, spare parts were bought up by 16% more actively compared to the same period in 2021.
The price of components is falling
At the same time, prices for spare parts for gadgets have stabilized and returned to the values of the beginning of 2022. In M.video-Eldorado and Citylink, Vedomosti clarified that, in particular, video cards have fallen in price – this happened, among other things, due to the fact that the demand for cryptocurrency mining has fallen sharply. That, in turn, collapsed due to the collapse of the token exchange rate, which caused some miners to go into negative territory, without recouping the cost of buying equipment.
As a result, Palit Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060SUPER video cards have fallen in price five times since March 2022 – from 500 thousand to 100 thousand rubles.
Where does the interest in repair come from
The growth of interest in laptop and computer repair coincided with the departure of foreign vendors from the Russian market and the rise in price of equipment. According to Mikhail Burmistrov, CEO of Infoline-Analytics, who cite Vedomosti, components for cars and other equipment, not necessarily computer, are also popular among Russians now. The expert explains this by the fact that the incomes of the population have fallen, and the prices of goods, including those that enter the country under the parallel import scheme, are growing.
"The price difference for reference laptop models with foreign countries like the UAE is from 30% and higher," Burmistrov clarifies, adding that this affects the attitude of Russians to the life cycle of gadgets.
Maxim Rodionov, head of the purchasing department of the distributor 3Logic Group, told the publication that today a self-assembled computer is 15% more profitable than a ready-made one from the store shelf, since the cost of components has decreased.
At the same time, the "gray" market of components is also growing – unofficial suppliers sometimes offer spare parts 20% lower than on unofficial sites due to non-payment of VAT. This brings additional profit to the Internet sites they access, says Rodionov.
It's not easy to fix everything
In the summer, CNews wrote that the increase in demand for equipment repairs was due to a shortage of some spare parts. So, Russians who have repaired a laptop, sometimes wait weeks for it to be repaired, since authorized service centers cannot get the necessary components from suppliers.
The problems began after February 24, 2022, when manufacturers of equipment refused to supply to Russia not only the gadgets themselves, but also spare parts for them. Among them were American Apple and Dell, Korean Samsung, Taiwanese Asus and Acer. If in June 2022 the problem of spare parts concerned only iPhones, soon Asus and Dell, Huawei and Lenovo and HP got on the list. Sometimes you even have to disassemble whole laptops for repairs. Most often, users need to change the keyboard.
Source: https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2022-10-26_rossiyane_skupayut_komplektuyushchie