Global shipments of desktops and laptops rose 3% in the second quarter from a year earlier, with Apple and Acer posting the biggest gains, up 20.8% and 13.7%, respectively, according to research firm IDC.

Two quarters of solid growth combined with excitement around PC AI and a new PC upgrade cycle seems to be what the PC market needs right now, said Ryan Reith, vice president at IDC.

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Apple was the fastest growing PC maker in the second quarter. Photo: Bloomberg

The PC market has been in a historic slump for the past few years after consumers, businesses, and schools made new purchases in 2020 and 2021 and then paused their purchases. Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani believes a new buying cycle is coming.

Computer makers are aggressively promoting AI PCs, devices designed to run artificial intelligence (AI) tasks, to customers. IDC said only about 3% of PCs shipped this year were optimized for AI.

Dell Technologies was the only major name to see a decline in sales in the second quarter, down 2.4%. China's Lenovo led the market with nearly 23% market share. HP posted a 1.8% gain and came in second, behind Lenovo, with 21% market share.

Weak demand in China held back the overall market. Excluding the mainland, global PC shipments rose more than 5%. In the three months ended June, 64.9 million PCs were shipped.

(According to Bloomberg)