The downward spiral for PC shipments continued during Q3/23 as global volumes declined 7.6% year over year with 68.2 million PCs shipped, according to preliminary results from the International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. Although demand and the global economy remain subdued, PC shipments have increased in each of the last two quarters, slowing the rate of annual decline and indicating that the market has moved past the bottom of the trough.

PC inventory has also become leaner in the past few months and is near healthy levels in most channels. However, downward pressure on pricing persists and will likely remain an issue within the consumer and business sectors. While most of the top five vendors experienced double-digit declines during the third quarter, Apple’s outsized decline was the result of unfavorable year-over-year comparisons as the company recovered from a COVID-related halt in production during Q3/22. Meanwhile, HP’s growth was largely due to the normalizing of inventory.

“The PC industry is on a slow path to recovery as a device refresh cycle and end of support for Windows 10 will help drive sales in the second half of 2024 and beyond. In the meantime, the PC industry will unfortunately experience more pain,” Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s mobility and consumer device trackers, said. “The slowness in the industry is giving the supply chain an opportunity to explore procurement and production options outside China, and this will likely remain a key issue going forward, second only to the advancement of AI within PCs.”

“Generative AI could be a watershed moment for the PC industry,” Linn Huang, research vice president for devices and displays at IDC, said. “While use cases have yet to be fully articulated, interest in the category is already strong. AI PCs promise organizations the ability to personalize the user experience at a deeper level all while being able to preserve data privacy and sovereignty. As more of these devices launch next year, we expect a significant boost to overall selling prices.”