Personal computers remain essential despite years of ‘post-PC’ predictions

Reports of the PC's death are an exaggeration

It is well over a decade since people started telling us we are in the post-PC era. The idea took off soon after crowds first queued to buy the original Apple iPhone.

There is something in the story. PC sales peaked in 2011 at 365 million. It has been downhill ever since. In 2020, people bought 260 million PCs.

In comparison phone hit 1.5 billion sales. That’s roughly six new phones for every computer .

Yet, to steal Mark Twain’s joke, reports of the PCs’ death are an exaggeration.

Who you gonna call?

Nothing illustrates this better than the response to the Covid–19 pandemic. Phone sales dropped when companies, schools and whole communities moved into lockdown.

Meanwhile, worldwide PC sales were up 11.2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2020. That’s according to IDC’s preliminary PC sales numbers.

All the big brands saw strong growth of notebooks and desktops. Apple, Acer and HP all saw double-digit year-on-year growth. Apple sales were up 36 percent on the year earlier. HP was in the top slot with 17.7 percent growth. Dell showed the weakest growth with only a 3.6 percent increase.

Reports say HP took a punt early on in the quarter and increased its notebook orders with its suppliers. The bet paid off.

Notebooks notable

Notebooks were the biggest winners. Channels around the world reported selling out of many models. It didn’t help that China, where most computers are made, was in lockdown during the period and the logistics firms moving hardware around the world had reduced capacity.

The main driver was the shift away from offices to working from home. Schools sending students home to continue learning online was another major cause. Both of these were obvious to anyone watching events. Less obvious was the number of people buying home computers to help relive lock-down boredom.

An untold story of the quarter was the shift from retail computer sales to online stores. Customers couldn’t shop, but they could click online. It’s possible this change may stick as the world moves on from lockdowns. This may have wider implications.

Relevance

The PC may not be dead. Yet despite the new relevance, sales are still nowhere near the peak. At that time analysts regarded the result as likely a one-off; newer data may show a different trend. The long slow decline may, or may not, have bottomed out, but no-one sees long term recovery.

Indeed, a worldwide recession is likely to have an impact on future PC sales. Mind you, the impact could be worse for phone sales.

Still, the key point here is that when the going got tough, people didn’t reach for phones, they reached for PCs. That should restore some confidence to the market.

Update, October 2025:

Five years on, the PC market continues to prove its staying power. After pandemic-era highs, global shipments dipped but have now stabilised, with modest growth returning in 2024–25. IDC reports renewed demand from businesses upgrading for AI-ready workloads and from consumers replacing ageing laptops. While tablets and phones dominate casual use, the personal computer remains central to work, creativity and gaming — far from obsolete, just evolving.