The Steam Deck and other handhelds are very popular among gamers. A market research institute has now published figures showing that the most successful model to date is the Steam Deck.
Where do the figures come from? The market research company IDC has investigated how often handheld PCs have been sold in recent years: Handheld PCs include the Steam Deck, as well as the ASUS ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go, and several other models.
The interesting thing about the figures presented by TheVerge is that the Steam Deck from Valve far surpasses its competitors and accounts for over 50% of total sales in 2023 and 2024. This corresponds to more than 3.7 million units.
The Steam Deck is the most successful handheld PC and remains unbeaten
What are the figures? The institute has come up with the following numbers for 3 years plus an estimate for the current year (2025):
- In 2022, a total of 1,620,000 handhelds were sold.
- In 2023, 2,867,000 units were sold.
- In 2024, sales figures dropped significantly again to 1,485,000 units.
- For 2025, market researchers estimate around 1,926,000 units. The figures for 2025 are an estimate.
In total, approximately 6 million handheld PCs have been sold since 2022. According to TheVerge and market researcher Lewis Ward, whom TheVerge consulted, the largest share of deliveries goes to the Steam Deck:
All deliveries in 2022 are the Steam Deck, and Ward tells [me] that over 50 percent of the deliveries in 2023 and 48 percent of the deliveries in 2024 are also the Deck. If you calculate, Valve has now delivered more than 3.7 million Steam Decks, and may have already surpassed the 4 million mark.
Even AMD was surprised by these figures. Marketing manager Frank Azor described this growth as “amazing,” considering that there was no gaming PC in handheld format three years ago.
The Nintendo Switch has held a special role in the handheld sector for years. The Nintendo console has sold well over 100 million units, but does not belong to the PC handhelds that either run on SteamOS or Windows.
Steam Deck 2 is said to be coming, but we don’t know much more yet
What’s next? Valve has not officially announced a Steam Deck 2 yet. However, Steam has stated that they want to announce a second model sooner or later. However, it is still completely unclear what hardware Valve will use in its next model. It is quite certain that the next model will again run on SteamOS as the operating system, and it is also not unlikely that AMD hardware will be used again.
Some games particularly benefit from the better display and the HDR options of the “Steam Deck OLED.” MyMMO presents you with 12 games you should check out if you already own an OLED model: 12 games you should definitely try on the Steam Deck OLED
