When the CDC announced the pandemic standing of Covid-19 in March, people naturally began bulk buying. Toilet paper, face masks, and hand sanitizers were sold out at various stores. People stocked up on crazy amounts of food that even Dwight Schrute from the Office with his survival food plan would be proud of. Amazon reported a 26% jump in revenue in their first quarter, as people started to rely increasingly on online shopping. Among the buying frenzy, tech products saw sales increase as a result of quarantine, adapted lifestyles, and new hobbies.
Here are 5 of the tech products/services that saw increased sales as a result of Covid-19.
Ring lights
I think it’s safe to say that the rise of TikTok’s popularity occurred as a result of bored teens and millennials alike, downloading the app “as a joke” during quarantine. Then, they consequently spend hours learning popular dances, making jokes, and posting their videos for their 10 followers to see. Of course, everyone knows that good lighting is important. Ring lights were popular during the Beauty Youtuber era, but they seem to have made a huge comeback with TikTok. The top 3 “best sellers” on Amazon have over 20,000 reviews combined, thousands of which are from this year.
Nintendo Switches & Video Games
Nintendo products have always done well at their release, but for the Switch, their popularity took off when quarantine started. At one point, it was almost impossible to get your hands on one of these. Best Buy, Walmart, Target were all sold out. Paired with the switch, video game sales jumped through the roof. NPD reported that compared to April 2019, video game sales rose 73% in a year. That’s a lot of Animal Crossing and Mario Kart being played.
On-Demand Streaming Subscriptions
During a lockdown, the construct of time doesn’t exist anymore. And what better use of time than to watch all 15 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and the 9 seasons of The Office over and over again? In the first 3 months of 2020, Netflix reportedly saw an increase of 15.7 million new subscribers. They weren’t the only streaming platform to see an increase in subscriptions. Disney+ passed 50 million users in April 2020. While the growth for these streaming services is record-setting, it’s expected that these numbers will slow as lockdowns end.
Office Tech
Working from home has become the new norm in corporate America. While offices across the nation have shut down, many employees have had to set up home offices. Webcams, desktop monitors, wireless keyboards, and headsets are all things that have seen an uptick in sales. These are pretty common items that many people had already at their homes. But some companies sent their employees company-issued devices to maintain security for their work. Logitech reported an increase of 13.6% in sales for their first quarter. Apple, even with various supply chain issues, reported an increase of 1% in sales compared to the same period last year. NBD reports an increase of around 23% in consumer tech overall, while the trend of overall spending has decreased.
Zoom
Similar to office tech, there has been an increase in downloads for video conferencing software. Zoom has been a popular one for students and employees alike. Eric Yuan, the founder, and CEO of the popular platform reported that in March 2020, the app was seeing 200 million meeting users a day. These numbers only continued to increase in April. Controversies were surrounding the usage of the app, causing it to be banned for some official company businesses, schools, and other organizations at the beginning of the year. The company has since then resolved some issues. It’s no doubt that Zoom has become a staple in many people’s lives.
I’d say that these 5 items were pretty unsurprising, especially given the amount of time spent in quarantine. It’ll be interesting to see how their sales numbers progress throughout the rest of 2020!
Opinions expressed by AsianBlurb contributors are their own.
Francisca Li (born 9/15/2001) is a student at the University of Texas at Dallas studying Business with a concentration in IT and Finance. She is a freelance graphic designer and branding expert as well as a co-founder of Orenda Change.
