Apple Inc. and Lenovo Group are the early benefactors of the looming tariffs, as consumers furiously snap up personal computers before they are subject to potential price hikes.
The threat of higher pricing amid tariff uncertainty proved a boon for the two PC giants in the first quarter of the year, with each posting double-digit growth in year-over-year PC shipments, according to a Counterpoint Research report.
Apple was the quarter’s big winner, enjoying a 17% pop in sales, assisted largely by its M4-based MacBooks announced in late 2024 and early 2025. Lenovo’s shipments grew 11% on the strength of its expansion into artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled PCs and a broader product line. The Chinese company maintained its lead as the largest seller of PCs globally, at 25%, during the first quarter. [HP Inc. was second overall, at 21%, followed by Dell Inc., at 16%, and Apple, at 10%.]
Worldwide PC shipments rose 6.7% to 61.4 million devices in the first quarter of this year.
“Several factors contributed to the Q1 increase in PC shipments,” said Olivier Blanchard, research director of The Futurum Group. “The first is the acceleration in adoption for AI-capable PCs…A second driver is the impending end of Windows 10 support (scheduled in October). This is helping accelerate demand for Windows 11 PCs in the commercial segment, both for enterprise and mid-market,” he explained.
“A third cause, we believe, was the impending threat of tariffs, and the impact they would have on PC prices. We saw a lot of front-loading [buying up as much pre-tariff inventory as possible to benefit from pre-tariff pricing] across a broad swath of industries — ranging from manufacturing and tech to automotive — during the period…That obviously included PCs,” Blanchard added.
“Going forward, competitive dynamics will be shaped by manufacturers’ ability to diversify their supply chains and production bases and position themselves to offer the best AI PC experiences by entering into key ecosystem partnerships, from silicon to software to model providers,” Counterpoint analyst William Li said.
Global PC manufacturing remains predominantly centered in China, Counterpoint said, posing significant challenges for the industry in navigating the ever-changing tariffs. Despite recent U.S. exemptions that remove tariffs on laptops, unpredictability lingers as the Trump Administration intends to levy new duties on semiconductors and other tech products within the next quarter.
“Consumer electronics will benefit, whether PCs, laptops or smartphones,” Andy Sack, co-founder of AI consultancy firm Forum3, said in an interview. “An entrepreneur told me some enterprising people were buying 1,000 MacBooks to resell.”
Hardware vendors, grappling with the nature and severity of tariffs as well as the threat of 30% to 50% retail price hikes, are taking a wait-and-see approach, according to Counterpoint.
“The U.S. market remains the most important market for AI PCs to demonstrate their capabilities and the best market to sell advanced AI-enabled devices,” Counterpoint Associate Director David Naranjo said. “High tariffs, or tariff policy uncertainties, will likely discourage consumers or enterprises from buying new devices with additional costs, which in turn will suppress growth and increase in penetration. The lingering global economic uncertainty will also pose a downside risk to our forecast of a mid-single-digit YoY shipment growth of the PC market in 2025.”
