Personal Computing Devices Market Insights

2024 Q2 PCD Market Overview

Worldwide personal computing devices market delivered its second quarter of growth following nine consecutive quarters of decline and recorded year-over-year growth of 7.3% in the second quarter of 2024 (2Q24), totaling close to 98 million units. Traditional PC shipments reached 64.2 million units, representing year-over-year growth of 1.8%. While the overall market benefited from favorable comparisons to 2023, weak results in China continued to hold the market back. Excluding China, worldwide shipments grew more than 4.7% year over year. Tablet shipments grew by 19.8% year-over-year with shipments totaling to 33.8 million units. The tablet market also benefited from a favorable comparison to the prior year's quarter and also from product refreshes from many top vendors and a replacement cycle combined with inventory replenishment.

In recent months, most of the industry players have laid out their initial strategies for AI PCs focusing primarily on the component side and the potential of the commercial market. While IDC believes the commercial market has the biggest short-term upside for AI in the PC industry, the consumer story has yet to be told in full. All eyes are on Apple to drive that message later this year with anticipated product launches, but it shouldn't be overlooked that Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD are all likely to make noise around both consumer and commercial AI PCs.

On the tablet side, the 2Q24 results signal that the market has moved beyond the pandemic. IDC expects that the refresh cycle and growth in emerging markets to continue aiding the recovery in the near term. While new entrants to the market focus on their global expansion, long-term leaders continue to focus on improving technology (as in the case of OLED displays for iPad Pros), catering to the need for premium devices, and utilizing the power of emerging technologies like AI. Long-term gains for the market depend on the vendors' ability to build devices that can carve a niche for tablets – one that includes innovation and differentiation.

For the full year 2024, the personal computing devices market is expected to grow 2.6% year over year to 398.9 million units. The traditional PC market will remain flat in 2024 with 261 million units shipped while the tablet market is forecast to grow 7.2% year over year as a refresh cycle and project investments are expected to drive the market.

For traditional PCs, the global market excluding China is expected to grow 2.8% in 2024 as China continues to suffer through a confluence of macroeconomic challenges, including high youth employment, deflation, and a tumultuous real estate market. However, China's economic concerns have largely impacted just the PC market as tablet demand has proven to be more resilient thanks to Huawei's efforts. PCs are forecast to grow 4.3% year over year in 2025 as the end of support for Windows 10 will drive a refresh cycle particularly among commercial buyers. However, this is also expected to present an opportunity for Apple to gain marginal share – growing from 9.1% in 2024 to 9.7% in 2025 and 10.2% in 2026 – as businesses use the PC refresh cycle to migrate some workflows to Mac.

AI continues to play a pivotal role in shaping the PC landscape, enhancing productivity and personalized user experience. Looking ahead, North America, major countries in Asia/Pacific (PRC, India, Japan), and some Western European countries are expected to lead AI PC adoption although this will largely be driven by the need for new PCs as opposed to a specific need for AI PCs.

Though near-term outlook for AI PCs remains modest, the long-term trend undoubtedly points towards an onslaught of AI PCs as the inclusion of a NPU propagates down to lower-tier PCs and supply eventually finds itself in a position where producing processors without a NPU becomes cost prohibitive.

Data table for "Historical PCD Market Share" chart

Quarter	Desktop	Detachable Tablet	Notebook	Slate Tablet	Workstation
2023Q2	17,398,307	14,856,051	43,985,048	13,362,365	1,693,476
2023Q3	18,625,007	18,194,137	50,046,733	14,683,499	1,827,900
2023Q4	18,697,131	21,357,556	47,155,002	15,497,988	1,851,436
2024Q1	16,764,373	16,977,314	41,766,262	13,974,122	1,680,297
2024Q2	16,814,066	18,921,001	45,494,810	14,877,881	1,880,475

Data table for "Forecast PCD Market Share" chart

Year	Desktop	Detachable Tablet	DT & Datacenter WS	Mobile WS	Notebook	Slate Tablet
2024	68,948,779	77,481,019	2,961,488	4,330,652	184,773,671	60,452,600
2025	68,934,349	79,545,891	3,130,613	4,569,947	195,625,827	60,057,189
2026	67,900,769	81,193,161	3,166,572	4,655,502	200,028,975	59,591,963
2027	67,541,987	81,404,199	3,249,002	4,801,717	203,585,586	59,189,848
2028	67,219,712	81,809,695	3,331,692	4,883,167	205,295,835	58,739,295