PC Sales Slid 1.5 Percent in Third Quarter

The top three PC makers all reported slower than expected PC unit sales growth in the most recent quarter, confirming analyst reports from Gartner and IDC. It’s the bad news this industry was hoping to avoid, and the long-awaited PC refresh cycle has been pushed back at least a year.

Lenovo, the world’s biggest maker of PCs, saw PC unit sales grow just 3 percent in the most recent quarter. HP, meanwhile, saw just 1 percent unit sales growth in the same time frame. And while Dell didn’t report unit sales numbers, revenues in its PC business fell 1 percent year-over-year (YOY) in the quarter.

These results confirm earlier reports from Gartner and IDC, which reported that PC sales fell 1.3 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively, in the quarter. Averaged, it looks like PC unit sales hit about 66 million in the quarter, a decline of about 1.5 percent YOY. The downturn comes after three quarters of flat or small growth. And each firm has ideas about why that happened.

“Even with a full lineup of Windows-based AI PCs for both Arm and x86 in the third quarter of 2024, AI PCs did not boost the demand for PCs since buyers have yet to see their clear benefits or business value,” Gartner director Mikako Kitagawa said. “Additionally, the demand for the Windows PC refresh driven by the end of Windows 10 support in 2025 did not fully pick up during the third quarter, partly due to economic challenges in certain regions.”

“Demand [for new PCs], without a doubt, has returned,” IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani added. “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.”

Both firms believe that a confluence of factors–the coming end of support for Windows 10 and newer AI PCs based on AMD, Apple, Intel, and Qualcomm chips–will have an impact. And both firms believe the industry is on the road to recovery. It’s just a matter of timing.

“PC demand will see more uptake toward the end of 2024 and more robust growth in 2025, when the PC refresh will be at its peak,” Gartner says.

“The next year will be largely about developing software, use cases, and target audiences for this AI-enabled hardware,” IDC added. “[But] the ramp up towards mass market will take longer than expected, well into 2026.”

Lenovo (16.5 million units sold), HP (13.6 million), and Dell (9.9 million) retained their spots atop the PC industry in the quarter, followed by ASUS and Apple. Apple sold about 5.5 million Macs in the quarter for about 8.3 percent market share.