Image: Butsaya
Market researcher IDC has lowered its forecasts for worldwide PC sales for 2025, stating that the impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs — higher PC prices — will reduce the average consumer’s desire to actually buy one.
The overall outlook, however, is still positive. In January, IDC said that it expected PC sales to grow 4.3 percent over 2024. Now, global PC volume is expected to increase 3.7 percent over 2024, for a total of 273 million PCs sold. When tablets are factored in, the overall growth lowers to 2.1 percent, for a total of 416.3 million units. Overall consumer device sales, including tablets, is expected to be 236.7 million units, growing just 0.2 percent.
(IDC is owned by IDG Communications, the parent company of PCWorld.com and its Foundry division.)
“Price hikes stemming from tariffs in the U.S. combined with subdued demand are leading to a negative impact within the largest market for PCs,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, in a statement. “However, the weakness amongst consumer demand is universal as macro issues persist. There are still some silver linings though: Workstation volume should remain healthy, along with near-term tablet demand in China boosted by consumer subsidies.”
IDC’s report says that it factored in tariffs applied to goods imported from China, which the Consumer Technology Association has already warned could spike the prices of technology products. President Trump also predicted that tariffs would be applied to semiconductor imports at the beginning of April, to the tune of 25 percent. Those do not appear to have been factored in to IDC’s revised forecast.
Update: IDC’s forecast assumed tariffs of Chinese goods taxed at 10 percent. Trump said Thursday that he will raise them to 20 percent on March 4, according to the Associated Press, along with 25 percent tariffs on goods imported from Mexico and Canada.
IDC said it predicts commercial PCs to drive the most sales in 2025, driven by Microsoft ending support for Windows 10 in October.
Has AI been a factor? Not really. “AI PC purchases have faced hurdles since their launch, but IDC expects a more robust ecosystem to emerge by latter 2025, leading most new PCs to be GenAI-capable by 2026,” IDC added.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers’ News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.