Global PC shipments have cratered 20% as rising prices hammer demand, after buyers rushed to beat earlier hikes and AI-fueled component shortages sent costs soaring.
The global PC market has taken a severe hit, with shipments plunging more than 20 percent in the third quarter as the AI-driven memory shortage pushes up prices and buyers decide their existing machines will do just fine. New figures from Omdia show worldwide shipments of desktops, notebooks, and workstations fell 21.2 percent year-on-year to 58.1 million units in Q3 2026. IDC estimates a 20.1 percent decline to 62.7 million units. The research firms differ on shipment totals, but agree the market has gone from bad to considerably worse.
The downturn follows a rush to buy PCs earlier this year, when manufacturers, distributors, and corporate customers brought forward orders to get ahead of anticipated price increases. That helped prop up shipments in the first half of 2026, but left the industry with a pile of inventory and fewer buyers in the third quarter. IDC said shipments fell 9.1 percent from Q2, bucking the usual seasonal pattern in which back-to-school demand lifts the PC market.
"What we're seeing is the result of the strong first half pull-in," said Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at IDC. "Vendors and channels loaded up on inventory early in the year to get ahead of price hikes, and that has thrown off the usual seasonality, where Q3 is typically larger than Q2."
Much of the trouble stems from the AI industry's appetite for memory and storage, which has left PC makers competing for increasingly expensive components. The shortage was already taking its toll in Q2, when IDC initially reported a 4.9 percent decline in shipments, since revised to 3.8 percent. Omdia estimates that DRAM and SSDs now account for nearly 40 percent of a PC's component costs, up from around 15 percent previously, following more than fourfold price increases. Shortages of processors, graphics cards, and other integrated circuits are also adding to manufacturers' woes.
The damage is being felt across the industry's biggest names. Lenovo retained its position as the world's largest PC vendor, shipping 14.9 million units, although IDC estimates that represents a 22.6 percent decline from a year earlier. HP fared worse, with shipments plunging nearly 31 percent to 10.3 million units. Dell recorded a 25 percent drop to 7.6 million, while Apple escaped relatively lightly with an 11 percent decline, according to IDC. The Mac maker even increased its market share despite shipping fewer machines. Omdia puts Apple's shipments higher, at 6.8 million units compared with IDC's 5.9 million.
Buyers may get some relief as retailers and distributors try to clear excess stock, but IDC doesn't expect a return to the prices consumers paid a year ago. "Channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand," Ubrani said. "That could translate into promotions and some short-term relief for consumers, but we don't expect pricing anywhere near what it was a year ago."
The outlook isn't particularly cheerful. Omdia expects global PC shipments to fall another 24 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter, followed by a further 7 percent decline across 2027. For an industry hoping AI would help sell more PCs, that's quite the result.