TL;DR: Global PC shipments fell about 20 percent in the third quarter of 2026 as high memory prices suppressed demand, with IDC reporting a 20.1 percent drop to 62.7 million units and Omdia reporting a 21.2 percent drop to 58.1 million units.

Two trackers confirm steep Q3 contraction

Global shipments of desktops, notebooks and workstations declined sharply in the third quarter of 2026, according to research published October 9, 2026. According to Omdia, worldwide shipments fell 21.2 percent year over year to 58.1 million units. According to IDC, shipments fell 20.1 percent year over year to 62.7 million units, compared with 78.5 million units in the third quarter of 2025.

Both firms cover desktops, notebooks and workstations in their totals. Omdia described the result as the industry’s sharpest decline since the first quarter of 2023, according to Ars Technica. IDC’s 20.1 percent year-over-year decline is the largest year-over-year decline the firm has recorded during a third-quarter period, according to PCMag.

The quarterly comparison also broke the normal seasonal pattern. IDC estimated that shipments fell 9.1 percent from the second quarter of 2026, when 68.2 million units shipped, according to Ars Technica. The third quarter normally produces larger shipments than the second quarter because vendors introduce products ahead of holiday shopping, according to PCMag. IDC said vendors and channels bought ahead of price hikes, which inflated early-year shipments and left the third quarter short of demand, according to The Verge.

The scale equals 15.8 million fewer PCs shipped than in the same period in 2025, according to TechRadar’s calculation from IDC data. The two analyst totals differ because IDC and Omdia use different shipment counting methods, with IDC at 62.7 million units and Omdia at 58.1 million units. Both agreed that the market moved from weakness to a much larger contraction in the third quarter.

Desktop and laptop segments both declined

Omdia reported declines across both major form factors in the third quarter. Desktop shipments, including desktop workstations, fell 23.5 percent to 11.7 million units, according to Omdia. Notebook shipments, including mobile workstations, declined 20.6 percent to 46.4 million units, according to Omdia.

Laptops remained the volume center of the market at roughly four times desktop volume. The 46.4 million notebook units and 11.7 million desktop units together total the 58.1 million units reported by Omdia. Desktops, the smaller segment, recorded the deeper percentage decline.

The breadth of the decline indicated broad demand weakness rather than a shift between categories. Both segments fell by about one-fifth, showing buyers purchased fewer PCs overall rather than substituting one form factor for another. Omdia’s breakdown was republished by Telecompaper with the same 58.1 million, 11.7 million and 46.4 million figures.

The desktop decline also reflected business and consumer responses to higher shelf prices. Omdia Research Director Ishan Dutt said consumers and IT decision-makers responded after upstream component cost increases worked through to end-market pricing, according to Omdia. Channel partners continued working through elevated inventory levels while vendors and original design manufacturer partners scaled back production during the third quarter, according to Omdia.

Early-year buying pulled demand forward

IDC attributed part of the third-quarter drop to purchasing earlier in 2026. Many PC vendors and sales channels stocked up on shipments earlier in the year in anticipation of memory price hikes, according to Ars Technica. That early buying left minimal demand remaining during the third quarter, according to Ars Technica.

“What we’re seeing is the result of the strong first half pull-in,” IDC research director for consumer devices Jitesh Ubrani said, according to The Register. “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,” Ubrani said, according to The Register.

Omdia gave the same explanation for the first-half pattern. “After sustained pull-forward activity buoyed the PC market in the first half of the year, this sharp drop in shipment volumes comes as no surprise,” Dutt said, according to Omdia. Dutt said the scale of the decline was consistent with signals from the last earnings cycle, when leading equipment makers forecast double-digit unit contractions for the second half and retailers reported double-digit increases in average selling prices alongside falling sales, according to Omdia.

The pull-forward followed a weaker second quarter. The shortage was already affecting shipments in the second quarter, when IDC initially reported a 4.9 percent decline that was later revised to 3.8 percent, according to The Register. IDC reported its first shipment decline in nine quarters during July 2026, a few months after cutting its forecast for the PC market for all of 2026, according to Engadget.

Memory costs now dominate PC bills of materials

Surging demand for high-bandwidth memory and server DRAM for artificial intelligence workloads has limited manufacturing capacity for consumer devices since 2025, according to Ars Technica. The affected consumer devices include consumer PCs, smartphones and gaming consoles, according to Ars Technica. Limited capacity pushed memory and storage prices higher for PC makers.

The cost share of DRAM and solid-state drives in PCs rose sharply from a typical level of around 15 percent to nearly 40 percent, according to Omdia Principal Analyst Ben Yeh. Price increases exceeded fourfold, according to Omdia. Omdia estimated that DRAM revenue globally would top $372 billion in 2026, up from $151 billion last year, according to TechRadar.

“Although PC vendors have raised prices multiple times over the past few quarters, these increases have yet to fully offset the impact,” Yeh said, according to Omdia. Omdia also reported continued increases in memory and storage prices alongside shortages of processors, graphics cards and numerous integrated-circuit components, which made supply-chain and inventory management more difficult for PC vendors.

PC prices increased more than fourfold on the component-driven pressure described by Yeh, according to Ars Technica. Vendors raised finished-PC prices multiple times over recent quarters without fully offsetting component inflation, according to Omdia. Yeh added that the pressures were expected to persist and that the current decline may be the beginning of a new downward cycle, according to Omdia.

Vendor rankings hold despite double-digit drops

Despite double-digit declines for most leading vendors in the third quarter, rankings remained largely unchanged both sequentially and year over year, according to Omdia. Lenovo remained in first place with 14.9 million units shipped and a 26 percent market share, according to Omdia. IDC estimated Lenovo’s shipments represented a 22.6 percent decline from a year earlier, according to The Register.

HP ranked second with shipments of 10.3 million units, according to Omdia. HP recorded the largest decline among the top vendors at 31 percent, according to Omdia. Its market share fell to 18 percent, nearly three percentage points lower than a year earlier, according to Omdia. IDC also estimated HP shipments plunged nearly 31 percent to 10.3 million units, according to The Register.

Dell remained in third place with 7.6 million units shipped for 13 percent of the market, according to Omdia. IDC recorded a 25 percent drop for Dell to 7.6 million units, according to The Register. The top three PC makers — Lenovo, Dell and HP — each saw shipments fall by more than 20 percent year over year, according to PCMag.

Apple held fourth position with shipments of 6.8 million units in Omdia’s count, down 11 percent year over year, according to Omdia. Apple gained more than one percentage point of market share as its premium positioning helped limit the impact of higher prices, according to Omdia. IDC placed Apple shipments lower, at 5.9 million units, compared with Omdia’s 6.8 million units, according to The Register. Apple escaped relatively lightly with an 11 percent decline and increased market share despite shipping fewer machines, according to The Register.

Asus rounded out the top five with shipments of 5.4 million units and market share improving to 9.3 percent year over year, according to Omdia. Asus recorded the smallest decline among the leading vendors, according to Omdia. Omdia reported its vendor table on October 9, 2026, alongside the 58.1 million-unit market total.

Historical comparison puts Q3 in context

The third-quarter drop was historically large for the July-to-September period but smaller than the pandemic-correction quarters. “If looking at all quarters, then we have seen other quarters in recent years with larger declines, such as 2022 Q4, which was -28.2 percent, and 2023 Q1, which was -28.7 percent,” Ubrani told PCMag. Both larger declines followed pandemic highs, according to PCMag.

Omdia’s “sharpest decline since Q1 2023” label places the current contraction against the end of that pandemic-era correction, according to Ars Technica. The industry shipped 78.5 million units in the third quarter of 2025 and 68.2 million units in the second quarter of 2026 under IDC’s count, making the 62.7 million-unit third quarter lower on both annual and sequential bases, according to Ars Technica.

The seasonal break was a central point for IDC. “Vendors and channels bought ahead of price hikes, which inflated early year shipments and left Q3 starved of demand,” IDC said, according to The Verge. “The result is a broken seasonal pattern: the third quarter is normally larger than the second, and this year it fell short,” IDC said, according to The Verge.

CIO Dive summarized the same pattern for technology buyers, reporting that total global shipments of desktops, notebooks and workstations fell 21 percent year over year in the third quarter and that rising costs forced information-technology leaders to hold back purchases, according to CIO Dive. CIO Dive also reported that supply-chain shortages pushed vendors to continue raising prices, according to CIO Dive.

What analysts expect for prices and shipments

Ubrani warned that sales channels feared excess inventory as high prices suppressed demand. “Channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand,” Ubrani said in a statement reported by Engadget. “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,” Ubrani said, according to Engadget.

Ubrani added that prices would remain elevated and that worsening macroeconomic conditions created risk for coming quarters. “Prices will remain elevated. With macro conditions worsening, the risk is that the outlook for the next few quarters gets worse before it gets better,” Ubrani said, according to Ars Technica. IDC said it expected PC prices to decrease only modestly and briefly, according to Ars Technica.

Retailers and distributors may discount to clear excess stock, but IDC did not expect a return to prices from a year earlier, according to The Register. “Channels are concerned about high inventory and low demand, so promotions are possible,” IDC said, according to TechRadar. TechRadar reported that IDC viewed the moment as possible temporary relief before further increases because stockpiling left equipment makers worried about moving inventory.

The forward shipment outlook pointed to further contraction. Omdia forecast the PC market would decline 24 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a further 7 percent decline expected for full-year 2027, according to Omdia. Yeh said vendor price increases had not fully offset component pressure and that the pressures were expected to persist, according to CIO Dive.

Component suppliers signaled a longer shortage. Executives from Micron and Samsung indicated last week that component shortages could continue through 2028, according to Ars Technica. The chief executive of Micron, a leading memory supplier, warned that the shortage would tighten further and persist into 2027 and 2028, according to PCMag. Hyperscaler data-center spending for artificial intelligence was projected to grow 55.8 percent and surpass $788 billion in 2026, adding demand for high-performance compute, according to CIO Dive’s citation of Gartner projections.

Sources referenced