The global PC market had a 3.7% year-on-year (YoY) shipment growth in the fourth quarter (4Q 2024), thanks to the year-end holiday season and China’s subsidy policy, according to Counterpoint Technology Market Research’s preliminary data.

Besides, there was a steady flow of PC orders from enterprises, which was driven by ongoing corporate IT upgrades before the end of Windows 10 support by October 2025.

For the full year of 2024, PC vendors shipped 253 million PCs, up 2.6% from 2023, thanks to both the impending end of Windows 10 support and the first wave of AI PCs in 2H 2024. Counterpoint believes the PC market has recovered to normal seasonality and entered a new phase after the launch of AI PCs in 2024.

PC brands introduced several AI PC solutions in 2024, starting with models based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite series, followed by AMD’s Strix Point and Intel’s Lunar Lake. Lenovo, Asus and Acer showed healthy growth above the market average. HP saw flattish growth, while Apple grew modestly after a weak first half offset by the launch of the new MacBook Pro in the year-end. Dell had a tough year with little activity on the enterprise side. We expect 2025 to be a good year for PC brands as the commercial markets increase their orders as a result of the sunset of Windows 10 and the increased model offerings for AI PCs.

“Overall, PC vendors’ market share in 2024 remained largely unchanged. But competition among chip vendors in the AI PC segment is intensifying with the entry of Qualcomm, AMD’s growing traction, Intel’s downturn and a potential new entrant with an Arm-based solution later this year. GenAI PC capability driven by Microsoft and chip vendors is set to put some life back into the PC segment,” said Senior Analyst William Li.

AI Advanced laptops PCs are basically Microsoft CoPilot+ computers sporting a powerful NPU, and AI-capable laptop PCs powered by NVIDIA‘s RTX 3000/4000 series GPUs, which can run GenAI applications on the device efficiently. Together, they have already captured 27% of the global laptop PC market in their first year of rollout. In 2025, AI laptops are poised to capture close to 60% of the total laptop market. The $1,000+ laptops, by default, will have on-device GenAI capabilities, which will also diffuse down to mid-tier PCs both in terms of hardware and support, accelerating the shipments of such laptops in 2025. The AI ecosystem on the software and application sides will continue to mature this year, with the Agentic AI proliferating.

By: DocMemory
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