As the global PC market stabilizes with five consecutive quarters of growth in 2024, shipments of AI-enabled PCs are expected to surge due to PC replacement demand resulting from the end of Windows 10 support in 2025 and the full-scale introduction of on-device AI.

According to the latest data from Canalys, the global PC market is expected to record its fifth consecutive quarter of growth in the fourth quarter of 2024, with total shipments of desktops, notebooks, and workstations increasing by 4.6% to 67.46 million units.

Notebook shipments, including mobile workstations, grew 6.2 percent to 53.7 million units, while desktop shipments, including desktop workstations, declined 1.4 percent to 13.7 million units.


Holiday demand was fueled by strong discounts from suppliers and retailers, enticing increasingly price-sensitive consumers.

This trend has also been supported by the use of buy now, pay later services, which are increasingly being used to drive spending on big-ticket items such as PCs.

In China, in the form of consumer subsidiesThe government's stimulus package helped spur spending on laptops amid weakening demand conditions.


Total sales in 2024 are expected to reach 255.53 million units, up 3.8% from the previous year.

Lenovo, which ranked first in market share, sold 61.87 million units, up 4.7% year-on-year, while HP sold 52.99 million units, up 0.2% year-on-year.

Dell sold 39.1 million units, down 2.2% year-over-year, while Apple sold 22.82 million units, up 2.0% year-over-year.

Asus sold 18.33 million units, up 11% year-on-year, while other companies sold 60.42 million units, up 9.1% year-on-year.


Growth is expected to accelerate in 2025 as hundreds of millions of PC users replace their devices ahead of the October end of support for Windows 10.

Canalys analyst Kieren Jessop said, “2024 was a year of modest recovery, with the PC market returning to traditional seasonality as annual shipments grew 3.8%. Growth picked up slightly in Q4, with shipments up 4.6% year-over-year. This is a positive trend as Windows 10’s end of support approaches in less than a year,” he said.

“Going forward, we expect the PC market to grow primarily driven by commercial demand as enterprises prepare to retire Windows 10,” said Ishan Dutt, principal analyst at Canalys.

“The advancements showcased at CES 2025 also underscore the industry’s commitment to making AI-enabled PCs a halo category, driving customers into a broader fleet replacement conversation. As on-device AI begins to enter more categories, price points and regions, we expect AI-enabled PCs to account for 35% of global shipments in 2025, according to CPU and PC vendor roadmaps,” he said.