Global PC Shipments Fell About 20% in Q3 as Memory Costs Climbed, IDC and Omdia Say

The PC market had one of its worst quarters on record. Two research firms say global shipments fell by about a fifth in Q3 2026 compared with a year earlier.

IDC counted 62.7 million units, down 20.1% from 78.5 million in Q3 2025. Omdia counted 58.1 million, down 21.2%. The firms measure differently, but the direction and the size of the drop are the same.

IDC says the 20.1% decline is the largest it has ever logged for a third quarter. Omdia calls it the sharpest drop since Q1 2023.

The numbers

Shipments also fell 9.1% from the second quarter, when IDC counted 68.2 million units. That runs against the usual pattern, where Q3 beats Q2 as vendors load up ahead of the holidays.

The prior quarter was far milder. Q2 shipments fell 3.8% year over year, per IDC's earlier figures.

Omdia's breakdown shows desktops, including desktop workstations, down 23.5% to 11.7 million units. Laptops, including laptop workstations, fell 20.6% to 46.4 million.

IDC's vendor figures show the biggest names took the heaviest hits:

• HP: down 30.9% to 10.3 million units
• Dell: down 25% to 7.6 million
• Lenovo: down 22.6% to 14.9 million, still the world's largest PC maker
• Apple: down 11.3% to an estimated 5.9 million Macs, with its share rising from 8.5% to 9.5%
• ASUS: down 8.6% to 5.5 million

Why it fell

IDC's Jitesh Ubrani blames a hangover. Vendors and sales channels stocked up early in the year to get ahead of memory price hikes, which left little demand to fill in Q3.

"What we're seeing is the result of the strong first half pull-in," Ubrani said. "Channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand."

Omdia research director Ishan Dutt said the drop "comes as no surprise." In his words, upstream component cost increases "has now fully worked its way through to end-market pricing," and consumers and IT buyers have responded accordingly. He added that vendors and their ODM partners began cutting production in Q3 while channel partners worked through elevated inventory.

The underlying cost problem is memory. Ben Yeh, principal analyst at Omdia, said memory and storage now make up nearly 40% of a PC's bill of materials. The typical figure is about 15%.

Since 2025, surging demand for high-bandwidth memory and server DRAM for AI workloads has left less manufacturing capacity for consumer devices. That squeezes PCs, smartphones and gaming consoles alike. Micron shut down its Crucial consumer RAM and SSD brand in late 2025 to concentrate on data center production, according to Tom's Hardware.

What buyers can expect

There may be a small break. Ubrani said the inventory overhang "could translate into promotions and some short-term relief for consumers."

He was explicit about the limits: "We don't expect pricing anywhere near what it was a year ago. Prices will remain elevated." IDC expects PC prices to fall "only modestly and briefly."

The broader outlook is worse. "With macro conditions worsening, the risk is that the outlook for the next few quarters gets worse before it gets better," Ubrani said.

The supply side offers no quick fix. Last week Micron's CEO warned that he expects the memory shortage to tighten further and persist into 2027 and 2028, according to PCMag.

A caveat on the comparison

Q3 2026 is not the worst quarter ever for PCs. Ubrani noted that Q4 2022 (down 28.2%) and Q1 2023 (down 28.7%) were steeper, though both followed pandemic-era highs. This time the decline comes off a first half inflated by pull-forward buying, which complicates any read on underlying demand.

PC makers are betting on a different product mix. They are pushing new mini PCs and laptops built to run AI locally rather than in the cloud, products that PCMag describes as pricey but powerful.

The next test is the holiday quarter. Whether channels cut prices to clear stock, or hold the line while memory costs stay high, will show up in IDC's and Omdia's Q4 counts.