PC Sales To Rebound In 2024 After ‘Unprecedented’ Declines: IDC

‘I foresee our clients getting back to a refresh cycle around summer,’ one Microsoft partner tells CRN, regarding PC sales. ‘With COVID purchases aging as devices go out of warranty and hopefully the cost of money decreasing, we’re being pretty optimistic our clients will get back on track with hardware replacement.’

Between an aging fleet of PCs bought during COVID and new generative AI assistants arriving for work, market research firm IDC expects a PC market rebound next year.

“The collective influence of these factors positions 2024 as a pivotal year for the PC market, offering a respite from recent challenges,” Needham, Mass.-based IDC wrote in its Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker released this week. “Beyond 2024, growth is expected to surpass pre-pandemic shipment levels and culminate in 285 million units by 2027.”

In 2023, IDC expects the number of PCs sold worldwide to drop by double-digits for the second straight year — a 16.6-percent decrease in 2022 compared with a 13.8-percent decline this year. However those analysts are betting that all that bad news means a turnaround is coming.

“Two consecutive years of double-digit year-over-year drops is an unprecedented trend in the PC market but will likely contribute to a recovery thereafter,” IDC wrote.

IDC expects PC shipments to grow 13.1 percent by 2027, from 251.8 million units shipped this year to 285 million units moved in 2027, for a compound annual growth rate of 3.1 percent.

Pandemic-era PC purchases are aging out, IDC said. Windows 10 end of support arrives in October 2025, and even companies with tight budgets are going to be forced to invest in new devices as more AI assistants deployed into the workforce will demand higher magnitudes of processing power. The PC market also stands to benefit as more use cases for GenAI materialize for workers, IDC said.

In the channel all of this is pointing to brighter days ahead for partners who move PCs, particularly as it relates to Microsoft Copilot, one Microsoft partner told CRN.

“This will be bigger than Office 365,” said Mark Essayian, president and founder of KME Systems of Irvine, Calif., who works extensively with midsize to small businesses.

“I foresee our clients getting back to a refresh cycle around summer,” he told CRN regarding his firm’s PC sales. “With COVID purchases aging as devices go out of warranty and hopefully the cost of money decreasing, we’re being pretty optimistic our clients will get back on track with hardware replacement.”

Earlier this month, Dell Technologies COO Jeff Clarke told investors that he expects PC sales to grow three to four percent by next year during the Round Rock, Texas-based company’s third fiscal quarter earnings call.

Clarke said PC demand had improved in June and July and early August sales were up, even exceeding its year-over-year total, he said, but then there was a slowdown in PC spending in September and October.

“The big change was the number of large deals slowed over the course of the quarter as our customers again became more cautious and selective,” Clarke said. “The pricing pressure changed in PCs from August to October. Those large deals became more competitive.”

Dell’s Client Solutions Group revenue—80 percent of which is PC sales—was down 11 percent year over year to $12.3 billion. Consumer PC sales took the biggest hit, down 19 percent year over year and 30 percent over the last six months.

IDC said the longest continued drop in PC sales happened between 2012 and 2016 when sales fell for 19 consecutive quarters. Jay Chou, research manager for IDC Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in a statement that there are already signs of improvement.

"Furthermore, notebooks are already at higher levels than 2019, signaling a sizable expansion of the notebook market even after COVID-induced purchases have subsided. We maintain that factors like hybrid work, commercial refresh, and growth in premium PCs can lead to a compound annual growth rate of 3.1 percent from 2023 through 2027."