IDC: global PC shipments plunge 20% in third quarter

Worldwide PC shipments fell 20.1% year over year to 62.7 million units in the third quarter of 2026, according to preliminary data from IDC. It was the second quarterly decline in a row and a much steeper one than the 3.8% drop in the second quarter. Shipments also fell 9.1% from the second quarter. Normally the third quarter is bigger than the second.it-online

IDC said the drop mostly came from earlier stockpiling. Vendors and retailers bought inventory in the first half of the year to get ahead of price increases driven by memory costs, and that left little demand for the third quarter. IDC also named ongoing supply shortages and "higher price points driven by AI data center build out" as main causes.it-online

Big three lose ground

The three largest PC makers all fell faster than the market. Together, Lenovo ↘ 2.94%, HP Inc. ↗ 2.54% and Dell Technologies ↘ 0.74% lost 4.2 points of market share. Lenovo stayed first, shipping 14.9 million units, down 22.6%. HP fell 30.9% to 10.3 million, and Dell fell 25% to 7.6 million. Apple ↗ 0.09% did better, with shipments down 11.3% to 5.9 million. ASUS ASUSTeK Computer Inc. fell 8.6% to 5.5 million.it-online

"Channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand," said Jitesh Ubrani, a research director at IDC. He said that could bring promotions, "but we don't expect pricing anywhere near what it was a year ago". IDC warned that worsening economic conditions could hurt the outlook for the rest of 2026 and into 2027.computerworld+1

Gartner reports a deeper drop

Gartner's own preliminary count showed a 22.4% decline to 55.4 million units, a level last seen in early 2023. Unlike IDC, Gartner did not blame excess inventory. "DRAM costs surged five times year-over-year in the second quarter, and PC vendors passed those higher component costs on to customers," said Namrata Banerjee, a Gartner research principal. She also pointed to vendors moving toward higher-priced configurations. In Gartner's data, Apple had the smallest decline among the top six vendors, at 7.1%.t2online

Who gains from the shortage

PC makers are trying to protect revenue by selling more expensive machines. In August, HP's chief financial officer, Karen Parkhill, said the company was prioritizing "higher-value unit placements, repricing for higher commodity costs." She added that memory and storage would keep taking up a larger share of the cost of building a PC. Memory makers, meanwhile, are earning record profits. Samsung Electronics guided for about 107.4 trillion won in third-quarter operating profit.startupfortune+1

Analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates said many businesses are also stretching out PC upgrades because most AI work runs in the cloud. Companies "have been spending big on infrastructure and cloud services to implement new AI solutions, which don't need the latest PC hardware," he said.computerworld