PC Shipments Drop By 1.7 Million As ‘Market Takes A Breather’

Worldwide shipments of traditional PCs during the third quarter of 2024 dropped by 2.4 per cent year-on-year to 68.8 million units, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker.

Traditional PCs include desktops, notebooks and workstations, but not tablets or x86 servers. 

In the third quarter of 2023 70.5 million traditional PCs were shipped.

“Factors including rising costs and inventory replenishment led to a surge in shipments in the previous quarter, resulting in a slightly slower sales cycle,” says the IDC.

Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager with IDC, said demand had returned for PCs among consumers and commercial buyers.

“However, much of the demand was still concentrated at the entry-level thanks to a recovering economy and the back-to-school season in North America,” Ubrani said. 

“That said, newer AI PCs such as Copilot+ PCs from Qualcomm along with Intel and AMD’s equivalent chips as well as Apple’s expected M4-based Macs are expected to drive the premium segment in coming months.”

AI will “reach ubiquity at some point at the end of this decade” says Linn Huang, IDC’s Research Vice President of Devices and Displays. “The ramp up towards mass market will take longer than expected, well into 2026.”

“The next year-and-change will be largely about developing software, use cases, and target audiences for this AI-enabled hardware.”

IDC says commercial demand outside the education sector was strong as “many businesses have begun to refresh their PCs in preparation for the end of support for Windows 10”.

“Key markets such as Japan grew double digits during 3Q24 and is leading this transition, but IDC expects other markets to follow suit in the coming quarters.”

Byran Ma, Vice President with IDC’s Worldwide Device Trackers, said that “after two quarters of mild growth, the market is taking a breather before going into the year-end buying period.

“Downside risks remain in the current geopolitical environment, but we think there is enough upside going into next year to lift the market into modest single-digit growth.”

Lenovo shipped the most traditional PCs in the quarter (16.5 million units), representing 24 per cent of the global market. In the corresponding quarter in 2023 it shipped 16 million units, which represented 22.7 per cent of the market.

Apple was ranked fourth, and its sales crashed from seven million in the third quarter of 2023 to 5.3 million in the third quarter of 224.