- PC shipments rose 8% in Q3 2025, helped by Windows 10 end-of-life
- Apple Macs have done especially well with a 15% year-over-year increase
- Windows PC makers have also seen some solid increases, with one notable exception.
It will always be the case that Windows 10 reaching its official end of support would take people in different directions than what Microsoft wants them to go, namely Windows 11, and that means not just Linux (which is often presented as an alternative), but also macOS.
MacRumors noted that Apple’s Macs have seen a lot of sales growth due to the end of life of Windows 10, as shown by the latest figures from Counterpoint.
The analytics firm’s statistics for global PC shipments show a sharp increase of 8.1% in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the same quarter last year, which has been driven in part by the end of Windows 10 (as well as “strategic inventory adjustments” due to US tariffs).
Apple has been a major beneficiary of this, with Mac shipments up 14.9%, helped by some new Smart MacBook models introduced this year and companies buying new laptops as Windows 10 PCs became obsolete.
Analysis: Windows 11 sales are not far behind either, with one important exception
Lest you think everyone is abandoning ship to join Apple’s Macs, other PC vendors have done well here too. In fact, Lenovo fared better, with a 17% third-quarter gain year over year, outpacing the 15% gain for Apple, which was just ahead of Asus at 14%. HP also gained 10%, so all the big PC makers pushing Windows 11 machines have also done well this past quarter, with one notable exception.
Dell struggled mightily, with its PC shipments dropping nearly a percentage point year over year, in stark contrast to all the other big players.
This is an unusually strong rise for Apple, and one Tim Cook will no doubt be pleased to see, especially given that Mac sales hit rough waters last year, and indeed in the third quarter of 2024 we saw Apple lose as much as it gained here. However, Apple has put all that in the rearview mirror, as Mac sales have only gone from strength to strength this year, culminating in this most recent rebound.
It’s Linux advocates who have really tried to capitalize on persuading Windows 10 deserters (those with older PCs that can’t run Windows 11 due to the stricter system requirements), so it’s interesting to see how much migration there has been to Macs. There are also suggestions that Linux, or certain distributions, are gaining ground as the end of life of Windows 10, but so far, these are limited indications.
However, the big picture the analyst firm is driving here is the shift to AI-enabled PCs, which isn’t expected to fully begin until 2027, Counterpoint believes, but what we’re seeing here are the early stages of companies purchasing laptops capable of accelerating local (on-device) AI tasks via an NPU, including MacBooks and Copilot+ PCs. Apple’s newest with Windows 11.
Counterpoint highlights incoming Intel Panther Lake processors, and also Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite, as powerful mobile CPUs that will help power Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs in these relatively early days of the AI ’revolution’.
However, it’s worth noting that we’ve already spotted a leak showing how Apple’s new M5 chip can outperform even the ‘Extreme’ version of the Snapdragon X2 Elite, at least in certain scenarios, which is promising for future MacBooks. Apple is doing well when it comes to making each new generation of M-series silicon more performant.
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