loading . . . Dell is Wrong About PCs, AI, and Consumers Dell, a company that doesn't understand PCs, AI, or consumers, certainly has a lot to say about all three. The problem? It's wrong. Dead wrong.
A Dell executive infamously said out loud what AI deniers need to hear: Consumers are not buying PCs "based on AI." This was widely reported because of course it was, my industry is terrible. But left unsaid is that Dell doesn't sell that many PCs to consumers, doesn't have an AI strategy for PCs (commercial or consumer), and is such a savvy marketer that it killed off its only solid consumer brand, XPS, last year only to bring it limping back to a market that had lost interest in Dell a decade ago or more anyway. Yeah, we should listen to these people.
Let's look at some numbers.
We're on the cusp of a new round of quarterly earnings reports, but here's what the most recent information about the top PC makers shows us.
Lenovo's Intelligent Devices Group (IDG) is responsible for its PCs, tablets, and phones, and it earned $15.1 billion in the quarter ending September 30, 2025, up 12 percent year-over-year (YOY). Lenovo is decisively in first place in the PC market with a record 25.6 percent market share (unit sales), and it claimed âindustry-leading profitabilityâ with over 33 percent of its unit sales now AI PCs. Lenovo is also the world's biggest maker of AI PCs, with 31.1 percent market share. So that seems to be working out pretty well for the company.
HP's PC business earned $10.4 billion in the quarter ending October 31, 2025. Revenues from consumer PC sales were up 10 percent YOY, and HP touted that 30 percent of the PCs it sells now are AI PCs. Looking at its earnings report, I see that net revenues from consumer PC sales were $11 billion, and HP is marketing the hell out of AI. HP, like Lenovo, is building out its own AI chatbot, the HP AI Companion, which is free for customers to use.
Apple reported Mac revenues of $8.7 billion in the quarter ending September 27, a gain of 13 percent YOY. That's pocket change compared to what it earns from the iPhone, but everyone is familiar with how Apple Intelligence is key to Apple's core hardware products, and that it has struggled to get conversational Siri up to its standards. And the reason we know all that is because AI is so important to Apple and its future. Apple doesn't break down consumer and commercial sales, but it's fair to assume the vast majority is consumer-based, or what I could call sales to individuals, not businesses.
So what about Dell? Where does Dell, the sudden genius about consumer PC buying habits and AI, land in all this?
Rock bottom, that's where.
Dell made just $1.9 billion in revenues selling PCs to consumers in the quarter ending October 31, 2025, a decline of 7 percent. Most of Dell's PC revenues come from commercial customers, who want boring, easily locked-down PCs no human being could love. And most of Dell's revenues overall come from servers and networking, a business no human being c...
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