World War Fee The first quarter of 2025 saw shipments of new PCs surge, as vendors and buyers tried to move machines before tariffs made them more expensive.

Analyst firm Canalys [1]spotted a 9.4 percent year-over-year shipment surge that meant 62.75 million PCs rolled off the production line in 2025’s calendar Q1. Rival analyst IDC [2]counted 63.2 million combined shipments of desktops, workstations and laptops, a 4.9 percent jump on the numbers it compiled in Q1 2024.

Those are jumps that have not been seen in the PC market for years (COVID anomalies notwithstanding) because refresh cycles have lengthened due to modern personal computers being so robust and powerful they can satisfy most needs for five years or more. Many business buyers used to buy new machines every three years.

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It’s also worth noting the analysts’ numbers report global shipments, and only the USA is slapping tariffs on PC-producing nations at the moment. That suggests stateside buyers have bought up big to avoid the price increases that follow tariffs.

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Canalys principal analyst Ishan Dutt said the shipments surge was “driven by vendors accelerating deliveries to the US in anticipation of initial tariff announcements.”

IDC research veep Jean Philippe Bouchard agreed. “The market is clearly showing some level of pull-in in the first quarter this year as both vendors and end-users brace for the impact of US tariffs,” he said. “In a first quarter still relatively untouched by tariffs, the entire ecosystem attempted to accelerate the pace of deliveries to avoid the first round of US tariffs and expected volatility for the remainder of the year.”

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Those tariffs were [7]announced last week and saw goods imported from major sources of PCs like Vietnam, Malaysia and China slugged with tariffs of 46 percent, 36 percent, and 34 percent. In the last few days the Trump administration paused the introduction of tariffs on all nations other than China, which now faces [8]125 percent duties on its exports.

Like almost everyone else trying to figure out what the USA’s whipsaw trade policy will mean, the analysts struggled to predict its impact on the PC market.

Canalys’s Dutt worried that higher PC prices caused by tariffs might see some orgs defer a move from Windows 10, which Microsoft won’t support as of October 14th, to Window 11s. Delayed OS migrations may also delay PC purchases.

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IDC’s Bouchard thinks the Windows transition remains a strong demand factor for PC purchase that won’t go away.

[10]System builders say server prices set to spike as Trump plays customs cowboy

[11]Non-x86 servers boom even faster than the rest of the AI-infused and GPU-hungry market

[12]Acer signals 10% laptop price hike in US, blames Trump's extra China tariff

[13]Microsoft declares 2025 'the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh'

The two analysts agree that PC shipments in the rest of 2025 are likely to slow down – but offered that opinion before today’s sudden pause on tariffs.

Another thing both analysts agree on is that Lenovo is the world’s top PC vendor. Canalys thinks it has 24.2 percent market share, IDC reckons it has 24.1 percent. Both also have HP Inc. in second place, followed by Dell, Apple, and ASUS.

The two firms have also seen PC manufacturers make efforts to shift their supply chains so they can produce hardware in locations less likely to wear tariffs.

But both also acknowledge that whatever tariff regime the US settles on, PC-makers will be left with no alternative but to pass higher costs onto consumers. ®

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[1] https://canalys.com/newsroom/worldwide-pc-shipments-q1-2025

[2] https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS53304025

[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Z_eWwy5oSSuHI12hjzUrcgAAAgQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

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[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Z_eWwy5oSSuHI12hjzUrcgAAAgQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/02/us_tariffs_liberation_day_announcement/

[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/09/eu_tariffs/?td=rt-3a

[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Z_eWwy5oSSuHI12hjzUrcgAAAgQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/trump_tariffs_servers/

[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/19/idc_server_market_share/

[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/18/acer_hikes_us_prices/

[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/06/microsoft_2025_windows_refresh/

[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/