Global PC shipments fell 21% in Q3 2026 as RAM and component prices climbed

PC shipments fall 21 percent

Global PC shipments dropped 21 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2026, according to Counterpoint Research figures reported by The Verge. The number lines up with earlier estimates from IDC and Omdia, two other major trackers of the market. The decline also breaks a long growth streak: until Q2 2026, shipments had been rising for more than two years straight.

The weakness was not confined to computers. In the same quarter, smartphone shipments fell to their lowest level in 14 years, The Verge reports.

Component costs are driving the decline

Counterpoint ties the slump to the rising cost of parts. RAM, SSDs and processors from Intel, AMD and Qualcomm have all grown more expensive over recent months, and those increases have flowed through to the prices of finished products, from MacBooks down to Raspberry Pis.

Counterpoint senior analyst Minsoo Kang said some manufacturers are now choosing to "prioritize configurations that can better absorb component inflation." The practical effect is that price-sensitive buyers are left with fewer affordable options, as vendors concentrate on machines that carry better margins.

Some companies have gone further and revived older technology, such as DDR4 memory and GPUs with 4GB of memory, as a way to blunt the impact of component price hikes, according to The Verge.

The comparison quarter was unusually strong

Part of the year-over-year drop comes down to the baseline. Counterpoint notes that Q3 2025 shipments were inflated by buying ahead of the Windows 10 support deadline, along with tariff-related inventory adjustments. Measured against an unusually strong quarter, this year's numbers look worse than the underlying trend — but that trend had already turned as prices climbed.

Counterpoint expects the slump to deepen

The research firm's outlook suggests the market will get worse before it gets better. Counterpoint associate director David Naranjo said global shipments are expected to plunge 27 percent in Q4 2026 and then remain broadly flat through 2027. "Stabilization should not be mistaken for recovery," Naranjo said — a warning that even once shipments stop falling, the market will still sit well below its recent peak.

Why it matters

A 21 percent single-quarter contraction is a sharp drop for a market of this size, and its cause is unusual: demand is not simply drying up so much as being priced out. Memory and processor inflation has made entry-level machines harder to build profitably, so vendors are prioritizing expensive configurations and dusting off older components to keep some products viable.

For buyers — including developers and IT departments planning hardware refresh cycles — that means fewer cheap options and elevated prices likely lasting through 2027. The flat forecast also implies the industry will spend another year absorbing component costs rather than growing, with any real recovery dependent on input prices coming back down.