Reports of the demise of the PC are often exaggerated. But there is no escaping the fact that after a pandemic sales boom, sales have been shrinking for eight straight quarters, or two years in old money. The situation is not good.

Fortunately, the latest figures for Q2 2024 from market analyst IDC show a much brighter picture. PC sales in Q2 were up 3% y/y, following a strong Q1 2024 with a 1.5% y/y increase, and this is more than just a blip.

Interestingly, PC sales in China were down significantly; IDC does not provide figures for Chinese sales, but it does state that sales in the rest of the world, excluding China, grew by more than 5%. That is quite healthy.

The same can be said for Lenovo. Lenovo's market share rose to 22.7% from 22.5% in the same period last year, with HP in second place at 21.1% and Dell in third at 15.5%. Dell's market share in Q2 2023 was 16.4%.

While it may seem surprising that Dell is third and Lenovo is first, IDC reports that laptops have recently outpaced desktops by a ratio of about 2.5 to 1. And Lenovo, of course, is best known for its laptop PCs.

In fact, Lenovo now makes some of the very best gaming laptops, and our fearless leader even credits it with surpassing Razer's Blade portable PC in the race for the love of mobile gaming.

In any case, IDC reports that sales of smaller brands as a group shrank slightly, down 1.1%. That said, the growth came from Lenovo, HP, and, coincidentally, Apple, the latter of which, no doubt thanks to MacBook sales, now accounts for 8.8% of the market.

Overall PC sales for the quarter totaled 64.9 million units. That means PC sales for the year are approaching 250 million units, a figure IDC attributed in part to the AI PC buzz and said it expects AI to drive even more sales in the second half of the year.

Ryan Reith, group vice president of Worldwide Device Trackers at IDC, said, "Without a doubt, the PC market, like other technology markets, faces challenges in the near term due to maturity and headwinds."

Major brands are winning, other markets are fairly flat, and AI is energizing the market, but broader trends and China are simultaneously putting the brakes on.

As for what this means for gaming PCs and gaming hardware, there is no one obvious takeaway other than the fact that PCs are not going anywhere; PCs are a very mature technology platform and sales are not going to explode. But likewise, the PC is not in terminal decline, even if traditional desktop PCs, including Lenovo's Legion Tower 5i, are becoming a niche player in the market.