Global PC Shipments Jump 9.6% in Q4 2025, Apple Ships 7.1 Million Macs [IDC]

Global PC shipments beat expectations to close out 2025, jumping nearly 10 percent in the fourth quarter as the industry raced to beat looming supply chain headaches. Preliminary data from IDC shows the market grew 9.6 percent year-over-year, hitting 76.4 million units in a quarter driven as much by anxiety over component costs as it was by holiday shopping.



While the end of Windows 10 support pushed a lot of corporate upgrades, the real story is happening behind the scenes. Vendors and commercial buyers spent the quarter stockpiling inventory to get ahead of potential tariffs and a developing memory shortage. IDC warns that this scarcity is already putting pressure on system prices, a trend expected to define the market throughout 2026. Manufacturers may even be forced to downgrade specs on mid-range machines just to preserve their memory inventory.


Apple held onto fourth place globally, shipping 7.1 million Macs for the quarter. While the company maintained a healthy 9.3 percent market share, its year-over-year growth was essentially flat at just 0.2 percent. That stands in sharp contrast to the double-digit gains seen by Lenovo, HP, and Dell, all of which leaned heavily into the commercial refresh cycle.

Despite the quiet finish to the year, Apple's broader 2025 performance was solid. The company saw an 11.1 percent increase in shipments for the full year, supported by the rollout of the M5 MacBook Pro in October. The flat growth in Q4 suggests that while the new pro laptops are moving, they didn't trigger the same volume surge as the mass-market PC upgrades driving Apple's competitors.

The incoming memory crunch is expected to drive up average selling prices across the board next year. While that is bad news for budget PC makers, Apple is generally better positioned to handle component price hikes due to its scale and premium pricing strategy. The company is also looking to expand its reach in the lower end of the market, with reports persisting that a low-cost MacBook designed to rival Chromebooks in the education sector is currently in development.

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