U.S. PC market stalls in Q2, anticipating tariffs

PC sales worldwide have steadily grown since late last year. The U.S. PC market, however, has crashed back to earth.

IDC’s preliminary numbers for the second quarter of 2025 show flat year-over-year growth of 0 percent, versus 9 percent for the rest of the world. All told, PC shipments during the second quarter of 2025 grew 6.5 percent from the prior year, with global volumes reaching 68.4 million shipments, according to preliminary results from the firm.

According to IDC, the reasons are pretty simple: U.S. PC vendors made and sold more PCs than expected as a hedge against looming tariffs. Now, the market expects those tariffs to begin kicking in again, with PC demand slated to drop off during the second half of the year. But no one is quite sure what the future holds.

“We expected the U.S. market to cool down this quarter given the inventory buildup to begin the year, but what we’re witnessing here might highlight U.S. PC demand slowing down in anticipation of the import tariffs looming deadline,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard, research vice-president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers, in a statement. “Despite a flat U.S. PC market, the rest of the world demonstrated an appetite for PCs, fueled by an aging installed base and by a steady transition to Windows 11.”

PC makers are juggling whether to build for an opportunity to take advantage of a down market, or risk getting caught with inventory that it can’t sell, added Ryan Reith, IDC’s group vice president.

“The bigger concern is what overall demand looks like as we get late into Q3 and beyond,” Reith said in a statement. “Price increases will likely be dispersed over time and geography depending on vendor strategy which can potentially lead to some attractive promotions as a way to clear inventory backups, which seems odd at a time when prices are expected to rise because of tariffs.”

Lenovo continues to be the world’s top PC maker, with 24.8 percent of the market. HP (20.7 percent) and Dell (14.3 percent) follow behind, then Apple (9.1 percent) and Asus (7.2 percent). Apple showed the strongest growth for the quarter, selling 21.4 percent more PCs than the same period a year ago.