PC shipments Q3 2026: down about 21% on memory costs

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Four analyst firms put the Q3 2026 PC market down about a fifth: IDC 20.1% to 62.7 million units (October 8, 2026), Omdia 21.2% to 58.1 million (October 9), Gartner 22.4% to 55.4 million (October 12) and Counterpoint 21% to 57 million (October 22). All four are preliminary and count PCs differently.
Gartner said DRAM costs were five times higher year over year in Q2 2026, and Omdia said DRAM and SSDs had risen from about 15% of a PC's cost to nearly 40%. TrendForce forecast conventional DRAM contract prices up 13–18% in Q3 and 10–15% in Q4 2026 as suppliers favor server and AI products.
Lenovo stayed first at every firm, and HP fell the most among the top five, by about 31%. Counterpoint expects a 27% drop in Q4 2026, and Omdia expects 24%.

Contents

PC shipments in Q3 2026 fell about 21% from a year earlier, according to Counterpoint Research's preliminary figures published October 22, 2026, and the three other big trackers agree on the scale: IDC says 20.1%, Omdia 21.2% and Gartner 22.4%. Each firm points to the same cause. Memory makers have been shifting production toward servers for AI chips and data centers, DRAM and SSD prices have jumped, and PC makers have passed the cost on. For why accelerators eat so much memory, see our Maia 300 story on 288 GB of HBM4 per chip.

This story is based on the Q3 2026 releases from IDC, Gartner, Omdia and Counterpoint, Counterpoint's memory price figures as reported by 9to5Mac, and TrendForce's July 3 and September 30, 2026 memory price forecasts, checked October 25, 2026.

The short version

The decline: 20.1% (IDC), 21% (Counterpoint), 21.2% (Omdia) and 22.4% (Gartner), year over year.
The units: 55.4 million (Gartner) to 62.7 million (IDC). The firms define a PC differently, so the totals don't match.
The cause they cite: memory and storage costs. IDC and Omdia also point to inventory bought early in 2026 ahead of price rises; Gartner says excess inventory wasn't the driver.
Vendors: Lenovo first everywhere; HP down about 31% at every firm; Apple and ASUS fell least among the top five.
Next quarter: Counterpoint expects Q4 2026 down 27%; Omdia expects 24%.

How much did PC shipments fall in Q3 2026?

By about a fifth at all four firms, but the unit counts differ by more than 7 million:

IDC (October 8): 62.7 million, down 20.1% from 78.5 million, and down 9.1% from Q2. IDC counts desktops, notebooks and workstations, and excludes tablets.
Omdia (October 9): 58.1 million, down 21.2%, "the sharpest decline since 1Q23." Notebooks fell 20.6% to 46.4 million and desktops 23.5% to 11.7 million.
Gartner (October 12): 55.4 million, down 22.4% from 71.3 million. Gartner counts desktops and laptops running Windows, macOS and ChromeOS, measured as sell-in to channels.
Counterpoint (October 22): 57 million, down 21% year over year and 13.8% from Q2.

All four call their figures preliminary. Because each firm tracks a different set of devices and uses its own estimates, their numbers shouldn't be averaged or ranked against one another.

Why are PC prices going up?

Memory. Gartner's Namrata Banerjee said "DRAM costs surged five times year-over-year in the second quarter," and Gartner said PC makers passed the increases on to buyers while steering scarce parts toward higher-priced models. She said "the impact of higher memory and storage costs is now fully reflected in PC pricing."

Omdia's Ben Yeh said "the cost share of DRAM and SSDs in PCs has risen sharply from a typical level of around 15% to nearly 40%," after prices for those parts rose more than fourfold. Counterpoint put 8GB DDR4 contract prices up 24% and 1TB NVMe SSD prices up 29% from the previous quarter, according to 9to5Mac.

The supply shift is the AI link. TrendForce said on July 3, 2026, that "ongoing capacity reallocations toward server applications are reducing the supply available for PC DRAM," and forecast conventional DRAM contract prices up 13–18% in Q3. On September 30, it forecast a further 10–15% rise in Q4, said suppliers "continue to prioritize advanced-process capacity for high-performance server products," and warned that "PC DRAM supply could decline in 2027 as more capacity shifts to server applications." Some chipmakers are designing around the squeeze; Intel's D270 uses LPDDR5X instead of HBM.

Higher prices weren't the only factor. IDC and Omdia both said vendors and channels bought inventory earlier in the year ahead of price increases, pulling demand out of Q3. IDC's Jitesh Ubrani said "channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand," and expects some promotions, but not prices near year-ago levels. Gartner disagrees on this point: Banerjee said that "rather than excess inventory," Q3's decline was driven by higher prices, as quoted by VARINDIA on October 13.

Which PC makers lost the most?

Gartner's preliminary vendor numbers:

PC shipments by vendor, Q3 2026 (Gartner, preliminary)

Millions of units shipped (sell-in), Q3 2026

Lenovo14.99

HP Inc.10.37

Dell7.58

Apple5.84

ASUS4.68

Acer3.87

Others8.03

Show the data

Vendor	Shipments
Lenovo	14.99
HP Inc.	10.37
Dell	7.58
Apple	5.84
ASUS	4.68
Acer	3.87
Others	8.03

Figure 1HP's 10.37 million was down 30.9% from 15.01 million a year earlier, the steepest fall among named vendors; Apple's 5.84 million was down 7.1%. Source: Gartner, preliminary Q3 2026 worldwide PC shipments, as of October 12, 2026.

In Gartner's count, Lenovo shipped 14.99 million PCs (down 22.4%), HP 10.37 million (down 30.9% from 15.01 million), Dell 7.58 million (down 25.4%), Apple 5.84 million (down 7.1%), ASUS 4.68 million (down 13.0%), Acer 3.87 million (down 11.2%) and all others 8.03 million (down 25.6%).

The other three firms, each on its own count:

Vendor	IDC (Oct 8)	Omdia (Oct 9)	Counterpoint (Oct 22)
Lenovo	14.9M, −22.6%	14.9M, −22.9%	15.0M, −23%
HP	10.3M, −30.9%	10.3M, −31.0%	10.3M, −31%
Dell	7.6M, −25.0%	7.6M, −25.0%	7.6M, −25%
Apple	5.9M, −11.3%	6.8M, −11.3%	5.6M, −11%
ASUS	5.5M, −8.6%	5.4M, −6.6%	5.2M, −7%
Others	18.4M, −14.0%	13.1M, −17.6%	13.3M, −16%
Total	62.7M, −20.1%	58.1M, −21.2%	57M, −21%

Table 1The firms agree on the top five order and on HP's roughly 31% drop, but differ on Apple by up to 1.2 million units. Source: IDC, Omdia (Business Wire) and Counterpoint releases. Gartner's figures are in the chart above.

Last verified: October 25, 2026

Apple and ASUS gained share at each of the three firms that published year-earlier shares (IDC, Gartner and Counterpoint). IDC put Apple at 9.5%, up from 8.5%; Counterpoint at 9.8%, up from 8.7%. Lenovo, HP and Dell together lost 4.2 share points in IDC's count.

What happens next?

The firms expect it to get worse before it improves. Counterpoint forecasts a 27% year-over-year drop in Q4 2026 and broadly flat shipments in 2027 compared with 2026; its David Naranjo said "stabilization should not be mistaken for recovery." Omdia expects Q4 down 24% and full-year 2027 down 7%, and Yeh warned that "the current decline may be just the beginning of a new downward cycle." IDC said worsening macro conditions could make its outlook worse.

The memory squeeze is one side of the AI build-out tracked in our gigawatt datacenter story: the same DRAM wafers that once went into laptops are being allocated to AI servers.

What's confirmed, reported and uncertain

Confirmed (firm releases): IDC's, Omdia's, Gartner's and Counterpoint's totals, vendor figures, forecasts and quotes; TrendForce's Q3 and Q4 2026 forecasts.
Reported: Counterpoint's 8GB DDR4 and 1TB NVMe SSD price changes, via 9to5Mac (Counterpoint's release shows them only in a chart image).
Uncertain: final figures, which can be revised; how much of the drop is price-driven demand loss versus inventory timing, on which the firms disagree.