Global PC Shipments Fell 21 Percent to 57 Million Units as Memory Costs Lifted Prices

Global PC shipments fell 21 percent year on year to 57 million units in the third quarter of 2026, according to preliminary data from Counterpoint Research, with the firm forecasting a further 27 percent decline in the fourth quarter as memory and other component costs keep pushing machine prices up.

The sequential drop was almost as severe: shipments were 13.8 percent lower than in the second quarter, a quarter that normally cedes ground to the third. Counterpoint attributed the collapse to affordability rather than to a lack of interest, saying higher system prices have removed the reasons consumers usually find to replace a working machine.

The vendor breakdown shows how unevenly that landed. Lenovo stayed in first place with 15 million units, down 23 percent, for a 26.3 percent share. HP shipped 10.3 million units, down 31 percent, the steepest fall among the top six, and held 18.1 percent. Dell, the most commercially exposed of the three, shipped 7.6 million units, down 25 percent, for 13.3 percent.

Apple and Asus held up better. Apple shipped 5.6 million units, down 11 percent, and its share rose to 9.8 percent from 8.7 percent a year earlier, which Counterpoint linked to the cheaper MacBook Neo cushioning the decline. Asus shipped 5.2 million units, down 7 percent, but grew 19.4 percent from the second quarter. The top five vendors accounted for 76.7 percent of shipments; everyone else shipped 13.3 million units, down 16 percent.

Part of the year-on-year gap is a base effect. The third quarter of 2025 was inflated by buyers racing the end of Windows 10 support and by tariff-related inventory building, so this year's comparison is against an unusually strong quarter. Commercial demand, propped up by device refresh cycles and the Windows migration, has been more resilient than consumer demand, but not resilient enough to offset the contraction.

"The global PC market is facing mounting pressure as rising memory and component costs push system prices higher and force consumers to delay replacement purchases," said Minsoo Kang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint. "With affordability becoming an increasingly critical purchasing factor, even market leaders are struggling to maintain shipment momentum."

The cost pressure is visible well outside the shipment data. Framework raised its DDR5 upgrade prices by about 50 percent and now points DIY buyers toward supplying their own memory, while Acer chairman Jason Chen has said PC prices could rise another 5 to 20 percent before the end of the year and peak in the first half of 2027, according to TechSpot. Counterpoint also noted that vendors are prioritizing configurations that can absorb the higher component costs, which thins out the entry-level machines that price-sensitive buyers used to choose.

IDC reached a similar conclusion with a separate estimate of roughly a 20 percent decline, so the direction is not in dispute even if the magnitude varies by methodology. The interesting question for 2027 is whether this is a demand problem or a supply tax. The evidence points to the latter: the memory being pulled into AI accelerators and servers is the same memory that used to go into cheap laptops, and the PC market is absorbing the difference in the form of higher prices and lower volume.