However, the US market showed a decline during the quarter. Neha Mahajan, a senior research analyst for Devices and Displays at IDC, said: "Bottlenecked supply chains and ongoing logistic challenges led the US PC market into its first quarter of annual shipment decline since the beginning of the pandemic.

"After a year of accelerated buying driven by the shift to remote work and learning, there’s also been a comparative slowdown in PC spending and that has caused some softening of the US PC market today. Yet, supply clearly remains behind demand in key segments with inventory still below normal levels."

The surge in demand in other regions was put down to the ongoing pandemic, with 86.7 million units shipped during the July to September period, IDC said, adding that these were preliminary figures from its Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker.

"The PC industry continues to be hampered by supply and logistical challenges and unfortunately these issues have not seen much improvement in recent months," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobile and Consumer Device Trackers.

"Given the current circumstances, we are seeing some vendors reprioritise shipments amongst various markets, allowing emerging markets to maintain growth momentum while some mature markets begin to slow."

IDC does not include tablets or x86 servers among traditional PCs, and while detachable and slate tablets are included in the Personal Computing Device Tracker, shipments of these two categories are not part of this data.