PC sales are not declining, they're growing, says another report

Apple's Mac mini

As far as the overall PC market goes, you can take your pick between J.P. Morgan's saying it's in decline, and now Canalys saying it isn't. Either way, they agree that Apple is holding reasonably steady.

According to Canalys, globally the PC market "ended its streak of annual shipment declines in the last quarter of 2023, posting a modest year-on-year growth of 3%." The top seller was Lenovo, which shipped 16.1 million PCs in Q4 for a 3% annual growth, while in the same quarter HP saw 6% growth year on year, and Dell sold 9.9 million units.

"Apple secured the fourth position in Q4 2023 by shipping 6.6 million units globally, achieving 9% growth," says Canalys. "The vendor maintained fourth spot in the full-year standings as well, experiencing a 14% decline from 2022 with total units reaching 23 million units."

By comparison, J.P. Morgan's data saw Apple decline year on year from 9.6% market share, to 8.8%.

J. P. Morgan's overall assessment is positive, with signs of sales recovery, but Canalys is much more upbeat and specifically because of AI.

"We expect one in five PCs shipped this year to be AI-capable, incorporating a dedicated chipset or block, such as an NPU, to run on-device AI workloads," it says. "Adoption will ramp up quickly thereafter, especially in the commercial sector, where the benefits of on-device AI related to productivity, security and cost management will become a key consideration for businesses."

Canalys predicts that "over 170 million AI-capable PCs" will be shipped by 2027. It expects that "[to] capitalize on the demand uptick, the PC industry will now deliver meaningful innovation through on-device AI capabilities in PCs, with 2024 set to be a bumper year for such devices."

Separately, Apple is expected to announce more M3 Macs by the middle of 2024.