In past years, the imports of laptops peaked in November, in anticipation of end-of-year shopping. In the early months of 2020, the first wave of COVID-19 caused a disruption to international trade and imports of laptops fell sharply as well.
However, as countries adjusted to the crisis, more people needed to work or study from home as well as rely on virtual meetings to contact friends and family. This caused the imports of laptops to reach an all-time high in April 2020.
Source dataset: DS-645593
China accounted for around 90% of extra-EU imports of laptops in 2019 and 2020. Imports from China increased by 19% from €12.1 billon in the first seven months of 2019 to €14.4 billion in 2020. Among the top-6 import sources, only Vietnam recorded a higher increase: from €0.5 billion to €0.6 billion (+31%).
Source dataset: DS-645593
Increases in imports of laptops of more than 30% were recorded in only two EU Member States: Romania (+38%) and Denmark (+35%). There were nine countries where imports grew by 20%-30% and a further nine where imports grew by 10%-20%. In six countries growth was between 2% and 10%, while only in Estonia did imports decrease slightly.
Notes:
- The European Union (EU) includes 27 EU Member States. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Further information is published here.
- The EU27 data reflect the political change in the EU composition so the UK is considered as an extra-EU partner country for the EU27. However, the UK is still part of the internal market until the end of the transitory period, meaning that data on trade with the UK are still based on statistical concepts applicable to trade between the EU Member States. As a consequence, while imports from any other extra-EU27 trade partner are grouped by country of origin, the UK data reflect country of consignment. In practice this means that the goods imported by the EU27 from the UK were physically transported from the UK but part of these goods could have been of other origin than the UK. For this reason data on trade with the UK are not fully comparable with data on trade with other extra-EU27 trade partners.
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