Global personal computer shipments rose 9.3 per cent year-on-year in the October–December quarter of 2025, driven by strong consumer demand and an upgrade cycle linked to Windows 11, according to preliminary data released by Gartner on Tuesday.
Worldwide PC shipments reached 71.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2025. For the full year, global shipments crossed 270 million units, marking a 9.1 per cent increase compared to 2024.
Rishi Padhi, Research Principal at Gartner, said the PC market recorded healthy growth during the quarter, supported by steady consumer demand and increased business purchases tied to operating system upgrades. He noted that demand softened towards the end of the quarter as promotional pricing offset earlier cost increases for high-end GPUs and AI-enabled PCs, resulting in stable to slightly lower average selling prices.
According to the report, there were no major changes in the global rankings of the top six PC vendors during the October–December period. Lenovo, HP and Dell retained their positions as the top three vendors, while also increasing their market share on a year-on-year basis.
The global PC market rebounded in 2025 after two years of sharp decline in 2022 and 2023, followed by only modest growth in 2024. The 9.1 per cent annual growth in 2025 reflects a recovery phase, with replacement demand playing a key role.
Gartner said factors such as tariff-related uncertainty, expected memory price increases in 2026 and rising costs linked to Windows 10 Extended Security Updates prompted enterprises to prioritise hardware replacements.
The report also highlighted that PC vendors increasingly promoted AI-enabled PCs during 2025 to capitalise on replacement demand. However, most AI PC features, including local AI inference, have yet to deliver substantial productivity benefits compared to cloud-based AI tools.
As a result, Gartner noted that many organisations are upgrading systems primarily to future-proof their device fleets rather than to derive immediate business value from AI capabilities.
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