Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Declined 22.4% in Third Quarter of 2026 As Component Cost Inflation Raised ASPs

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 55.4 million units in the third quarter of 2026, down 22.4% from the third quarter of 2025, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.

“The impact of higher memory and storage costs is now fully reflected in PC pricing. DRAM costs surged five times year-over-year in the second quarter, and PC vendors passed those higher component costs on to customers, driving the steep decline in PC shipments during the third quarter,” said Namrata Banerjee, Principal, Research at Gartner.

“PC shipments have fallen to levels last seen in early 2023, though the market dynamics were noticeably different,” said Banerjee. “Rather than excess inventory, the decline in the third quarter of 2026 was driven by higher prices, vendor-led reprioritization of scarce components and a shift toward higher-priced configurations. The resulting reduction in the availability of lower-cost devices made replacement purchases less affordable for consumers, while businesses focused spending on targeted investments, such as workstations and AI PCs rather than broad-based PC deployments.”

All of the top six worldwide PC vendors experienced shipment declines in the third quarter of 2026. Lenovo remained the market leader, with shipments falling 22.4% year-over-year in line with the market. Its supply chain scale and broader AI and infrastructure portfolio helped preserve its competitive position. HP Inc. recorded the steepest decline with shipments down 30.9% but maintained its No. 2 position. Its relatively high exposure to price-sensitive consumer and mainstream commercial segments contributed to the decline. Apple recorded the lowest shipment decline of the top six vendors and gained 1.7 percentage points of market share, supported by its portfolio of mainstream MacBooks (see Table 1).

Table 1: Preliminary Worldwide PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 3Q26 (Thousands of Units)

^{Notes: Data includes desktop and laptop PCs that are equipped with Windows, macOS and Chrome OS. All data is estimated based on a preliminary study. Final estimates will be subject to change. The statistics are based on shipments selling into channels. Numbers may not add up to totals shown due to rounding. 
Source: Gartner (October 2026)}