For additional context, handheld PCs in general were estimated to have 6 mil in total sales during that period, so the steam deck is 2/3s of the market.
Some additional quotes from the source material:
“I think it’s amazing,” AMD gaming marketing boss Frank Azor tells me, discussing IDC’s numbers for handheld gaming PCs. “This didn’t exist three years ago; we went from nothing, zero, to incremental category creation in the millions of units.”
But out of those 6 million shipments, the lion’s share have been the Steam Deck itself, according to IDC’s estimates. All of the 2022 shipments are the Steam Deck, and Ward tells me upwards of 50 percent of the 2023 shipments and 48 percent of the 2024 shipments are the Deck as well. Doing the math, Valve has now shipped upwards of 3.7 million Steam Decks and has quite possibly crossed 4 million by now.
With as few as 2 million Windows handhelds shipping in two years, it’s not a huge surprise that AMD and Intel aren’t spending big on more custom chips like the one that’s still working perfectly well for the Steam Deck — particularly if the rumors are true that early Windows handheld buyers returned their purchases at unusually high rates. (Anecdotally, I’ve seen lots of open-box stock of the Asus ROG Ally when I’ve looked at Best Buy online and in-person.)