- PC shipments are up 8% in the third quarter of 2025, helped by the end of life of Windows 10
- Apple Macs are doing particularly well with a gain of 15% over one year
- Windows PC makers also saw strong increases, with one notable exception.
It was always expected that Windows 10 reaching its official end of support would take people in other directions than Microsoft wants them to go, which is Windows 11 – and that doesn’t just mean Linux (which is often touted as an alternative), but macOS.
MacRumors has noticed that Apple Macs have seen a lot of sales due to the end of Windows 10, as shown by the latest figures from Counterpoint.
The analytics company’s statistics on global PC shipments show a sharp 8.1% increase in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the same quarter last year, partly due to the impending end of Windows 10 (as well as “strategic inventory adjustments” due to US tariffs).
Apple was a major beneficiary, with Mac shipments up 14.9%, helped by some new smart MacBook models introduced this year and businesses buying new laptops due to the obsolescence of Windows 10 PCs.
Analysis: Windows 11 sales are not far behind either – with one major exception
Lest you think everyone is jumping ship to get on board with Apple Macs, other PC vendors have also done well here. In fact, Lenovo fared best, with a third-quarter gain of 17% year-over-year, outpacing Apple’s 15% increase, which was just ahead of Asus with 14%. HP also gained 10%, so all major PC makers that offer Windows 11 machines also did well in this latest quarter, with one notable exception.
Dell has struggled seriously, with its PC shipments falling by almost 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 that Tim Cook will no doubt be pleased to see, especially since Mac sales hit troubled 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 gotten stronger this year, culminating in this latest surge.
It’s Linux advocates who have really tried to win over Windows 10 defectors – those with older PCs that can’t run Windows 11 due to the higher system requirements – so it’s interesting to see how big the migration to Macs has become. There are also suggestions that Linux – or some distributions – are making hay while Windows 10’s end-of-life sun sets, but so far these are limited clues.
However, the main focus put forward by the analyst firm here is the shift to AI PCs, which isn’t expected to fully take off until 2027, Counterpoint estimates – but what we’re seeing here are the early stages of laptop companies buying capable of accelerating local (on-device) AI tasks via an NPU, which include Apple’s new MacBook and Copilot+ running Windows 11.
Counterpoint highlights Intel’s new Panther Lake processors, along with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite, as powerful mobile processors that will help push Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs in these relatively early days of the AI ”revolution.”
Notably, 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 some scenarios – which is promising for MacBooks of the future. Apple does a good job of making each new generation of M-series silicon perform better.
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