New figures from research outfit IDC show that Valve's Steam Deck is likely still the most popular handheld gaming PC by far. However, the market for handhelds fell by 50% in 2024 versus 2023 and overall volumes are still very small compared to desktop and laptop gaming PCs, and consoles to boot.
IDC was commissioned by the Verge to break out the best data the research outfit had on handheld gaming PCs. That data covers the biggest players in the handheld market, namely the Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw.
Slightly frustratingly, it does not include Chinese handhelds from GPD, Ayaneo, OneXPlayer and others. However, it's generally thought these are smaller volume products.
Whatever, the numbers go like this. IDC puts overall handheld sales for 2022 at 1,620,000 units. That rose to 2,867,000 units for 2023 before falling back precipitously to 1,485,000 in 2024.
IDC doesn't break those figures down in detail. However, it will say the full 2022 figure is all Steam Deck, while 2023 is in excess of 50% Steam Deck and 48% of 2024's numbers are again Steam Deck.
All told, than means Valve has probably sold about four million Steam Decks to date. Not bad. On the other hand and to provide some context, really roughly around 35 to 50 million desktop gaming graphics cards are sold every year, while the market for gaming laptops these days, again very roughy, is around 30 million units annually.
Console sales are rather cyclical, but annual unit sales of Sony and Microsoft consoles combined are likewise typically measured in the low 10s of millions of units, while the Nintendo Switch has shifted 150 million units since 2017, which works out to about 20 million units a year.
So, PC gaming handhelds are still a very small niche compared to other gaming PCs and mainstream gaming devices like the big consoles from Sony and Microsoft and arguably the closest analogue, the Nintendo Switch.
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As for the future, IDC is forecasting 1,926,000 handheld sales for 2025. Again, that's just for the Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, and MSI Claw and not including smaller players.
That's better than 2024 but still well, well down on the 2.9 million units of 2023. So, it's hard to argue that the handheld gaming PC market is exploding. Where it goes from here is hard to predict.
However, if there's one lesson here, The Verge probably has it right. These handhelds probably work best with truly custom silicon like the Aerith and Sephiroth AMD-based chips in the original Steam Deck and the Steam Deck OLED as opposed to using the generic APUs with which all the other systems make do.
