Acing Back-To-School Laptop Sales 2025

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Back to School Season 2024

The Back-to-School 2024 season revealed intense competitive maneuvering among leading laptop OEMs, with HP, Lenovo, and Acer significantly ramping up education laptop discounts—some exceeding 200% discounts compared to prior months. Real-time competitive intelligence from AI-based Digital Shelf Analytics platform, C5i Compete, showed that Lenovo nearly doubled its education SKU count and Dell held back on discounting altogether. Gaming laptops catering to students, especially from ASUS and HP, also saw high traction. Armed with real-time digital shelf analytics, brands optimized pricing, inventory, and content strategies dynamically. As we approach the 2025 season, expect OEMs to escalate their tactical agility, deploying AI-powered price intelligence and assortment realignment for sharper cross-channel dominance.

The Story Since June 2024

Digital Shelf insights from C5i Compete indicate that the Commercial segment continued to be the most hotly contested, followed by the Consumer segment.

During the past several months, it has emerged that:

• HP has been consistently leading Share-of-Shelf in Commercial SKUs, significantly ahead of Lenovo and Dell. HP not only had the highest SKUs, but also the highest discounts.
• Dell dominated the Consumer segment—nearly double of Lenovo and well ahead of HP.
• Lenovo provided the highest Education category discount (average of 31.81%), making it an aggressive player in the academic sector.
• Dell maintained the lowest discounting strategy in the Commercial space at just 12.68%, suggesting premium positioning.
• Gaming units were most sold by Dell (382 units) but closely followed by Lenovo (303 units) and then HP at a distant third (218 units), hinting at strong 1-2 positioning in the Gaming category.

Lenovo’s discounting strategy is particularly notable in the Consumer and Education segments, suggesting a focus on value-driven customers.

Dell maintains balanced discounting across segments, with strong Commercial and Consumer sales but less emphasis on Education and Gaming.

The market remains highly competitive, with HP leveraging deep discounts to drive volume, particularly in the Commercial and Consumer sectors. Lenovo and Dell are focusing on targeted discount strategies, with Lenovo prioritizing the Commercial and Education segments and Dell maintaining steady performance across all categories. These trends suggest ongoing price competition and a differentiated focus on strategic market segments for growth.

Processor Market Share Comparison: June-Dec 2024 vs. Jan-May 2025

Using C5i Compete’s Assortment Gap module, we analyzed processor market share for the two periods, including both AI and non-AI variants from major brands such as Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, MediaTek, and Snapdragon.

AI-based laptops are expected to drive the next wave of PC sales, especially with growing demand for on-device intelligence and productivity acceleration. Within the first 5 months of 2025 itself, it has become apparent that the war in terms of laptops with AI Chips is only heating up. Data indicates that number of laptops with AI Processors within the first 5 months of 2025 has already surpassed the cumulative offerings in 2024.

Beyond numbers

• Lenovo has aggressively partnered with Intel and Qualcomm to launch AI PC models like the Yoga and ThinkBook series with dedicated NPUs.
• Dell is integrating AI-capable chips in its XPS and Latitude lines but has been slower to define a focused AI strategy beyond hardware upgrades.
• HP has emphasized AI-ready features in its Elite and Spectre lines, focusing on user-centric AI applications like adaptive brightness, noise removal, and thermal tuning.

Amongst these 3 major players, Lenovo appears to be ahead in positioning and product diversity in the AI PC space, with stronger marketing and faster rollouts.

What will Back to School in 2025 be like?

The 2024 season saw deep discounting and SKU expansions—particularly Lenovo doubling its education SKUs and HP slashing prices aggressively. This year, we expect brands to escalate this trend, but with sharper targeting. Lenovo is likely to increase its Education SKUs again, potentially by 30%–40%, backed by its continued leadership in AI laptop rollouts. Dell, while less aggressive in 2024 education discounts, may cautiously expand this year with moderate pricing strategies to protect its premium positioning. HP, which led in volume via heavy discounting last year, is expected to maintain this approach but will likely introduce AI features as differentiators in its mid-range models.

Expect AI-based laptops to play a pivotal role in back-to-school choices. With AI processor adoption up over 300% (e.g., AMD Ryzen AI) and AI laptops outpacing 2024 numbers in just the first five months of 2025, OEMs will likely make AI-readiness a headline feature. Lenovo, with its early and diverse AI PC launches, will use this edge to appeal to education buyers prioritizing future-ready machines. HP will continue emphasizing user-centric AI capabilities like noise removal and adaptive display settings. Dell’s AI approach remains hardware-led but may lack the marketing thrust needed for this seasonal peak.

Discounts may stabilize in Commercial and Consumer segments, but the Education category will likely see average discounts rise by 5%–10%, driven by Lenovo and HP’s ongoing tactical rivalry. Clients will increasingly leverage platforms like C5i Compete for Inventory analytics and AI-powered pricing to ensure highly responsive, day-by-day discount variations, especially on platforms like Amazon and Best Buy.

Researchers’ Note:

Across North America and EMEA regions, C5i Compete has enabled brands to use real-time, at-scale data analysis powered by AI to discover granular and critical insights on online sales and ecommerce trends. These insights on online laptop sales during the pre-Back-to-School period are an example of intelligence shared with our business partners to help them make informed decisions to influence sales during similar holiday/sales seasons.

C5i Compete (also available on Azure Marketplace) has been helping global clients make winning data-driven decisions in the ecommerce space, driving sales, profitability, and superior customer experience. Compete syndicates data from 1000+ websites, mobile apps, and data sources across 30+ countries and runs advanced analytics to fuel digital commerce decisions for global enterprises, brands, and retailers. The platform has helped clients deliver outcomes like 3X increase in speed to contextual Digital Shelf Performance insights, 36% increase in Sales Volume with timely pricing decisions, 17% increase in Share of Search on marketplaces, 23% increase in Content Effectiveness, and more. This has made Compete a preferred choice for several leading companies in the ecommerce space seeking to out-pace and out-sell competition, especially during high-velocity, high-volume sales periods like Thanksgiving/Black Friday, Christmas/New Year’s, and Back-to-School seasons.

To know more, visit the C5i Compete website or write to us at knowmore@c5i.ai.

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