PC market, as expectedlast quarter returned to growth after a two-year decline, as evidenced by reports from leading analytical agencies IDC and Canalys: in the first quarter of 2024, about 60 million computers were sold worldwide (1.5% more than a year ago).
What is the situation on the PC market?
There are minor discrepancies in the calculations IDC and Canalysbut both teams recorded positive dynamics. This was largely due to… the downturn in the first quarter of 2023, when the PC market shrank by 28.7% and reached «bottom», the lowest point on record. In fact, global PC sales have returned to pre-pandemic levels — to the results of Q1 2019, when 60.5 million computers were sold. In other words, the PC market has actually rolled back 5 years.
In terms of structure, according to Canalys, laptop shipments (including mobile workstations) grew by 4.2% to 45.1 million units, while desktop PCs (+ desktop workstations) actually remained at the same level, down only 0.4% to 12.1 million units.
Against the backdrop of declining inflation, PC sales began to recover in all key regions — the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). At the same time, deflationary pressures in China, the largest market, affected the entire global PC market — and the desktop segment, which had shrunk significantly as laptops grew in popularity, shrank by another 25%.
Top 5 largest PC manufacturers
The top five remained unchanged, with only Acer and ASUS changing positions in recent months. China’s Lenovo is still the largest PC vendor in the world, but the difference between Lenovo and the US-based HP in terms of sales is relatively small: 13.7 and 12.0 million computers. But in terms of growth rates (+14.6%), Apple is (again) ahead of everyone, so updated MacBook Pro to M3, M3 Pro and M3 Maxapparently sell well along with other models. According to the results of the first quarter, only ASUS and Dell saw their sales fall in the top five. The rest either grew or, like HP, remained at the same level.
What’s next
Analysts agree that the positive trend will continue throughout the year despite weak demand in China, driven primarily by a new PC refresh cycle and the transition to Windows 11 (it’s time to upgrade PCs purchased earlier during the pandemic), as well as the emergence of new AI PCs. Canalys predicts that by 2024, vendors will ship nearly 50 million AI PCs — that is, those with a separate integrated AI unit, such as an NPU