Counterpoint Research’s latest preliminary read on Q3 2025 shows a clear, calendar‑driven bump in the global PC market — an 8.1% year‑on‑year rise in shipments — and names Lenovo, ASUS and Apple among the biggest beneficiaries as enterprises, schools and many consumers moved to replace Windows 10 machines ahead of Microsoft’s support cutoff.
The immediate narrative is simple: Microsoft’s formal end of mainstream support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 created a hard deadline that forced organisations and many individual buyers to decide between upgrading in place, purchasing Extended Security Updates (ESU), or replacing hardware with Windows 11–capable (or alternative OS) devices. That fiscal and compliance pressure produced concentrated refresh programs — especially in education and public procurement — which translated into a measurable increase in sell‑in and shipments through Q3.
Counterpoint’s preliminary Q3 snapshot reported global PC shipments up 8.1% YoY, explicitly linking that uplift to both the Windows 10 sunset and “strategic inventory adjustments” tied to shifting US import tariff policies. Independent trackers show the same directional signal even if the headline totals differ: Gartner put Q3 at roughly 69.9 million units (+8.2%) while IDC’s preliminary read landed higher at ~75.8 million (+9.4%), reflecting routine methodological differences between sell‑in and sell‑through measures.
Key vendor takeaways in the Counterpoint release (and widely repeated industry summaries) include:
Why the AI PC thesis is plausible
The secondary narrative — that AI PCs and new silicon from Qualcomm (Snapdragon X2 Elite family), Intel (Panther Lake / Core Ultra 3) and GPU vendors like NVIDIA will power additional growth into 2026 — is credible as a market trajectory. Hardware roadmaps and early platform claims are in place and will shape product positioning. However, expecting AI capabilities alone to drive a widespread, immediate replacement cycle in 2026 is optimistic: software maturity, enterprise pilots, cost trade‑offs and deployment governance will determine how quickly AI features move from marketing differentiator to procurement imperative.
For IT leaders the practical outcome is clear: treat ESU as a tactical bridge where needed, prioritise high‑risk endpoints for replacement, pilot AI devices with measurable success criteria, and insist on lifecycle and sustainability commitments from vendors to avoid the downstream costs of a rushed refresh.
Organisations facing the Windows 10 deadline now have a rare choice architecture: replace and future‑proof selectively, buy time with ESU for complex estates, pilot AI where the ROI is clear, and demand responsible supplier practices on deployment and disposal. The market’s top‑line numbers tell a story of momentum; the next chapter will be written by how carefully buyers and vendors translate AI capability from PR into productive, secured outcomes.
Source: TechNave Counterpoint reports ASUS, Apple and Lenovo have significant rise in shipments due to end of support for Windows 10 | TechNave
Background / Overview
The immediate narrative is simple: Microsoft’s formal end of mainstream support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025 created a hard deadline that forced organisations and many individual buyers to decide between upgrading in place, purchasing Extended Security Updates (ESU), or replacing hardware with Windows 11–capable (or alternative OS) devices. That fiscal and compliance pressure produced concentrated refresh programs — especially in education and public procurement — which translated into a measurable increase in sell‑in and shipments through Q3. Counterpoint’s preliminary Q3 snapshot reported global PC shipments up 8.1% YoY, explicitly linking that uplift to both the Windows 10 sunset and “strategic inventory adjustments” tied to shifting US import tariff policies. Independent trackers show the same directional signal even if the headline totals differ: Gartner put Q3 at roughly 69.9 million units (+8.2%) while IDC’s preliminary read landed higher at ~75.8 million (+9.4%), reflecting routine methodological differences between sell‑in and sell‑through measures.
Key vendor takeaways in the Counterpoint release (and widely repeated industry summaries) include:
- Lenovo: strongest year‑over‑year gain (around 17% range), leveraging scale in enterprise and education channels.
- Apple (Mac): shipments up roughly 14.9–15%, as MacBook demand and enterprise adoption rose in the quarter.
- ASUS: double‑digit gains (around 14% in several reports), driven by consumer notebooks and gaming SKUs.
- HP: mid‑single to low‑double digit growth (~10%).
- Dell: slight decline in some trackers (around ‑0.9% to ‑1%), with mixed timing across large tendered deals.
Why shipments rose: forced migration, compatibility ceilings and ESU
A handful of technical and policy realities turned a calendar deadline into a procurement wave:- Windows 10’s end date was a hard compliance event. Enterprises and many public organisations treat an end‑of‑support date as a non‑negotiable trigger — unsupported OSes are a compliance and security risk for regulated environments. Microsoft’s ESU program is designed as a time‑boxed bridge, not a long‑term alternative for large fleets.
- Windows 11 compatibility is not universal. The hardware baseline for Windows 11 — including TPM, firmware and approved CPU families — prevents many Windows 10 PCs from doing an in‑place upgrade. For these devices, organisations face a full platform refresh rather than a simple OS update, accelerating hardware replacement decisions.
- Scale and procurement cycles favour B2B/education. School districts, ministries of education and large enterprises operate on fixed budgeting and lifecycle cadences; when a deadline compresses risk, these buyers move at scale. Japan’s wide education refresh programs are frequently pointed to as a high‑volume example that materially pushed APAC totals.
- Tariff and inventory timing compressed shipments. Several trackers and vendor channels flagged a “pull‑forward then digest” pattern in North America: fears of new import duties led some OEMs and channels to front‑load shipments early in the year, thereby muting later quarter retail sell‑through while inflating earlier sell‑in figures. This complicates simple YoY comparisons but does not negate the calendar‑driven replacement activity.
The winners: why ASUS, Lenovo and Apple gained
A short assessment of what each vendor did to capture the Windows 10 refresh wave:- Lenovo — scale and reach. Lenovo’s dominance in commercial channels, breadth of business SKUs and strong logistics footprint translated to large, repeatable shipments into enterprise and education tenders. The company’s ability to serve both low‑cost education models and higher‑end commercial SKUs let it capture disproportionate share of bulk refresh contracts.
- ASUS — consumer and gaming acceleration. ASUS’s Q3 outperformance was largely driven by consumer notebooks, gaming lines, and seasonal promotions. These markets reacted strongly to refreshed product cycles and pent‑up consumer demand for higher‑spec portable gaming rigs, which boosted unit totals and sequential growth.
- Apple — the Mac alternative in an OS shakeup. Mac shipments rose ~15% as a meaningful subset of Windows 10 buyers — both consumers and enterprise teams — evaluated macOS as a migration path instead of Windows 11. Strong MacBook model cycles, Apple Silicon performance and rising corporate adoption (where Mac fleet management has matured) made the Mac an attractive option for organisations looking to reduce migration risk and simplify device refresh roadmaps. Counterpoint called out Mac growth as the “nearly 40% of the install base still on Windows 10” dynamic created an opportunity for platform switches.
- HP and Dell — services and timing. HP captured solid commercial demand with services and managed deployment bundles; Dell showed resilience in its core enterprise channels but experienced more timing variance on large public tenders, explaining the slight YoY softness in some tracker windows.
The “AI PC” story: driver, distraction or both?
Counterpoint and multiple trackers flagged another thematic driver: the industry’s push toward AI‑capable PCs — machines with integrated NPUs, local inferencing, and marketing tied to Copilot/Copilot+ experiences. Vendors and silicon makers have lined up platform announcements and roadmaps that tie new silicon to on‑device AI claims:- Intel’s Panther Lake (Core Ultra series 3) was launched as a flagship consumer AI PC platform built on Intel 18A, promising large TOPS counts, balanced XPU architecture and shipments beginning late 2025 with broad availability in early 2026. Panther Lake is explicitly positioned as an “AI PC” platform.
- Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite family (including X2 Elite Extreme variants) positions high TOPS NPUs (the Hexagon NPU claims up to ~80 TOPS in flagship parts) and is targeted at Windows‑on‑Arm ultraportables and premium thin‑and‑light machines slated to ship in the first half of 2026. Qualcomm markets these chips as enabling local LLM inference and premium battery/AI experiences.
- NVIDIA continues to drive GPU and local AI frameworks for developers and content creators, rolling out Blackwell‑class technologies and references for local foundation models and RTX‑AI stacks aimed at PCs and edge devices.
Why “AI PCs in 2026” is plausible — and why it’s still a stretch
There is a defensible case that 2026 will see brisk uptake of AI‑capable PCs, but it’s not guaranteed. The reasons for both optimism and caution are important for procurement teams and buyers to weigh.Why the AI PC thesis is plausible
- Silicon roadmaps are real and immediate. Intel’s Panther Lake is shipping to OEMs and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite platforms are scheduled for device launches in early 2026 — the hardware foundation for local AI is arriving.
- Commercial budgets are already being allocated. Organisations replacing Windows 10 fleets are often choosing AI‑capable models where the price delta is sensible; procurement logic says buy a more future‑proof device when a large, mandatory refresh is already budgeted.
- Vendor ecosystems are aligning on software stacks. OEMs, Microsoft and major ISVs are packaging AI experiences (Copilot, on‑device LLM acceleration, privacy/local inference) as differentiators that can justify higher ASPs and enterprise pilots.
- Maturity of on‑device AI software is uneven. Running meaningful, production‑grade LLM workloads on local NPUs requires software and model engineering that many organisations have yet to validate against real KPIs. Early AI PC features are often consumer‑facing and exploratory rather than mission‑critical.
- Total cost and battery trade‑offs remain real. True on‑device inference at scale can be energy‑intensive; vendors will need to demonstrate that the productivity gains offset higher device costs and complexity.
- Enterprise adoption cycles are measured. Large organisations rarely flip device strategy instantly; pilots, governance, data protection and vendor vetting slow adoption. ESU purchases and staged migration plans will keep some fleets on extended coverage well into 2026.
- Channel inventory and timing distort visibility. Pull‑forward shipments, tariff responses and channel stock cycles can make early 2026 growth look stronger on paper than it is in deployed, active use.
Practical guidance for IT and procurement
For IT managers and procurement teams facing Windows 10 cutover and the choice of whether to buy AI‑capable devices now, a pragmatic approach reduces risk and maximises value.- Map and segment the estate: identify which endpoints are non‑upgradable to Windows 11, which users genuinely need higher AI capability (creatives, data scientists, on‑device privacy needs), and which can be delayed.
- Prioritise high‑risk and high‑value endpoints: refresh systems that expose compliance risk first; use ESU as a controlled bridge where full replacement is not immediately feasible.
- Pilot AI devices with measurable KPIs: run small, role‑specific pilots for AI‑capable machines that track productivity, latency, cost and governance outcomes before broad rollouts.
- Demand lifecycle commitments from suppliers: insist on trade‑in, refurbishment and secure wiping programs to reduce e‑waste and lifecycle risk.
- Watch channel inventory metrics: avoid chasing sell‑in numbers alone; focus on deployable devices and the channel’s ability to deliver imaging, security and management at scale.
Risks and secondary effects
The Q3 bump brings short‑ and medium‑term trade‑offs to watch.- E‑waste and sustainability concerns. Large, synchronous replacement cycles can produce significant amounts of retired hardware. Procurement agreements should emphasise refurbishment, responsible recycling, and secure data destruction.
- Channel and margin pressure. Front‑loaded shipments to beat tariffs or meet tender deadlines create uneven channel inventories and potential clearance pricing later in the cycle, which can compress margins and confuse true demand signals.
- Vendor marketing vs engineering reality. “AI PC” is an attractive narrative for premiumisation; vendors will emphasize on‑device inferencing and NPUs, but buyers must separate marketing claims from reproducible, role‑specific outcomes. Early device selection should require proof points — not just vendor slideware.
- Security surface expansion. New NPUs, model stores and AI‑centric firmware introduce additional security considerations. Governance for on‑device models, data access controls, and patching of AI stacks must be added to endpoint security playbooks.
Verdict: forced OS migration was the primary accelerator — AI PCs will follow, but not automatically
Counterpoint’s 8.1% Q3 uplift is real and corroborated by multiple tracker snapshots; the proximate cause is unambiguously the Windows 10 end‑of‑support deadline and associated institutional refresh programs. Lenovo, ASUS and Apple were among the primary winners in that cycle, while HP and other large OEMs also captured meaningful share depending on regional tenders and channel dynamics.The secondary narrative — that AI PCs and new silicon from Qualcomm (Snapdragon X2 Elite family), Intel (Panther Lake / Core Ultra 3) and GPU vendors like NVIDIA will power additional growth into 2026 — is credible as a market trajectory. Hardware roadmaps and early platform claims are in place and will shape product positioning. However, expecting AI capabilities alone to drive a widespread, immediate replacement cycle in 2026 is optimistic: software maturity, enterprise pilots, cost trade‑offs and deployment governance will determine how quickly AI features move from marketing differentiator to procurement imperative.
For IT leaders the practical outcome is clear: treat ESU as a tactical bridge where needed, prioritise high‑risk endpoints for replacement, pilot AI devices with measurable success criteria, and insist on lifecycle and sustainability commitments from vendors to avoid the downstream costs of a rushed refresh.
Conclusion
The Q3 2025 shipment rebound is less a sign of a broad consumer resurgence than a policy‑and‑lifecycle‑driven refresh wave anchored to Windows 10’s end‑of‑support. Counterpoint’s 8.1% YoY headline captures the immediate effect of that forced migration and the strategic actions of OEMs and channels. The evolving “AI PC” era — powered by Panther Lake, Snapdragon X2 Elite silicon and richer GPU stacks — provides a plausible second runway of growth, but turning that runway into consistent, measurable enterprise value will require time, software investment and disciplined procurement.Organisations facing the Windows 10 deadline now have a rare choice architecture: replace and future‑proof selectively, buy time with ESU for complex estates, pilot AI where the ROI is clear, and demand responsible supplier practices on deployment and disposal. The market’s top‑line numbers tell a story of momentum; the next chapter will be written by how carefully buyers and vendors translate AI capability from PR into productive, secured outcomes.
Source: TechNave Counterpoint reports ASUS, Apple and Lenovo have significant rise in shipments due to end of support for Windows 10 | TechNave
