The industry’s sudden burst of energy owes much to the impending death of Windows 10 and some crafty inventory shuffling ahead of changing US import tariffs.
The approaching end-of-support for Microsoft’s veteran operating system in October 2025 has effectively acted as an industry-wide alarm clock. Roughly 40 per cent of the world’s PCs are still clinging to Windows 10, forcing corporates and consumers to refresh their creaking machines before the deadline hits.
Lenovo, the world’s largest PC maker, was the biggest winner of the quarter with shipments leaping 17.4 per cent year on year. HP clung firmly to second place after a 10.3 per cent jump, thanks to strong sales in the commercial sector.
The Grey Box Shifter, Dell was less fortunate, its shipments dipping 0.9 per cent compared with last year, though it managed a modest 2.7 per cent quarterly gain as enterprise buyers stayed cautious.
The Fruity Cargo Cult Apple had a blinder, posting a 14.9 per cent shipment surge off the back of shiny new MacBooks and an unexpected bump in enterprise orders. Asus, meanwhile, saw the most explosive growth quarter-on-quarter, up 22.5 per cent, while notching a 14.1 per cent annual increase driven by brisk consumer notebook demand.
Together, the top five vendors now control nearly three-quarters of the global market, leaving smaller players gasping for air.
Counterpoint Research senior analyst Minsoo Kang said, “While the current growth is primarily driven by OS migration, the industry is poised for an even more profound transformation with the rise of the AI PC. However, this next wave of growth has not yet fully materialised in the Q3 2025 numbers.”
That transformation, he reckons, will properly kick off from 2026 as the first generation of proper AI chips arrives. The line-up includes Qualcomm’s new Elite X2, Troubled Chipzilla’s upcoming Panther Lake architecture, and various Frankenstein efforts cobbled together with Nvidia's help.
Associate director David Naranjo added, “The PC market’s rebound in 2025 is about preparing for what is next. Many enterprises are choosing AI-capable PCs to future-proof their fleets, even if they do not yet need those capabilities immediately.”
Naranjo said this “next refresh cycle will be defined by intelligence at the edge, not just performance improvements.”
Right now, so-called AI PCs are more about bragging rights than necessity. Most buyers still care about operating system compatibility, decent performance, and battery life rather than fancy on-device chatbots. Still, manufacturers are hyping the AI PC concept hard, claiming the real boom will arrive after 2026 once a new generation of chips starts shipping in volume.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite, Chipzilla’s Panther Lake Core Ultra range, and NVIDIA’s work with MediaTek on Arm-based AI CPUs are all expected to set that stage. Mass shipments of these AI-centric processors won’t land until late 2026, meaning the long-promised “AI PC era” will only properly ignite from 2027 onwards.
Expect CES 2026 to be full of breathless demos showing laptops running large language models locally instead of leaning on the cloud. For now, though, it’s the ghost of Windows 10 keeping tills ringing rather than artificial intelligence.