PC Shipments Soar 9.4% in Q1, But Trump Tariffs Will Ruin Things Further

Canalys analysts determined that 62.7 million notebooks, desktops, and workstations were shipped worldwide last quarter. The annual growth in shipments reached 9.4%. Notebooks alone increased by 10% to 49.4 million units, but this dynamic was due to concerns about tariffs being introduced in the United States, and the global PC market will inevitably undergo a correction in the future. At the same time, these growth rates turned out to be the highest since spring 2021.

Image source: Lenovo

According to the source, desktop and workstation shipments in the first quarter grew by 8% to 13.3 million units year-on-year. Most suppliers tried to import as many finished PCs as possible to the US to protect themselves and consumers for a while from the impact of customs duties that come into effect today, reaching an impressive 104% in the Chinese direction. How the market will move towards the autumn milestone in the form of the end of support for Windows 10 is not yet entirely clear.

In the second quarter, the PC market is expected to inevitably decline, as seasonal factors will be supplemented by the impact of customs duties in the United States and the stockpiles accumulated in previous periods. For example, Lenovo and HP Inc. increased their PC shipments to the United States in the first quarter by approximately 20 and 13%, respectively. The introduction of increased duties in the United States will hurt demand for expensive laptops the most, as their prices will increase more. Corporate customers will be forced to save money when updating their PC fleet in light of the end of support for the Microsoft Windows 10 operating system in October of this year.

Image source: Canalys

A Canalys survey of SMB PC upgraders in March found that 14% of respondents were unaware of the upcoming end of support for Windows 10, while 21% were aware but had no plans to upgrade their PCs. Of those surveyed, 30% were aware of the end of support for Windows 10 and were considering purchasing new PCs, while only 35% had already planned to upgrade their PCs.

Since the US has been pressuring China for several years now, by the end of this year most PC suppliers to the US market will exclude Chinese-made products from their import structure. For example, HP Inc. intends to increase the share of computers assembled outside of China to 90% by the end of 2025. Other Asian countries are expected to be more accommodating in terms of regulating their trade with the US than China, and therefore the main directions of production migration outside of China will not change dramatically after the new US customs duties come into force.

Image source: Canalys

On a global scale, the leader in the PC market remains the Chinese Lenovo with a share of 24.2%, which was able to increase the supply of its products of this type by 10.7% in a year-on-year comparison, to 15.2 million units. HP Inc., although it can boast of second place and a share of 20.3%, increased its supplies in the first quarter only by 6.1% to 12.8 million units. Dell Technologies, whose products are very popular in the United States, increased supplies on the world market by only 3% to 9.6 million units, limiting itself to third place. But Apple increased supplies by 22.1% at once to 6.6 million computers and laptops. This provided it with fourth place and 10.4% of the market. Asustek Computer (Asus) closes the top five with a market share of 6.4% and a supply volume of just over 4 million units, which grew by a decent 8.8% according to the results of the first quarter.

All other PC manufacturers account for only 23.4% of the global PC market, reporting shipments of 14.7 million units in the first quarter, up 10.8% from the same period last year.