The personal computer market has run into a sharp reversal. Worldwide shipments of desktops and notebooks fell about 21% year over year in the third quarter of 2026, according to new market figures, as the pull-forward demand that flattered earlier quarters faded and component costs climbed.
Memory and storage sit at the heart of the squeeze. The cost share of memory and solid-state storage in a typical PC has risen from around 15% to nearly 40%, with prices up more than fourfold, according to the analysis. Shortages of processors, graphics cards and other components have made supply chain and inventory management harder for vendors at the same time.
Manufacturers have raised prices repeatedly over recent quarters, but the increases have yet to fully offset the pressure on margins. The outlook offered with the figures is for the decline to deepen before it eases, with a further drop of about 24% forecast for the fourth quarter and a smaller fall expected across 2027.
The league table shows the pain spread unevenly. The market leader shipped about 14.9 million units for a share near 26%, down roughly 23% on the year. The second-placed vendor fell about 31%, while the most resilient of the top five limited its decline to single digits. In total, vendors shipped around 58 million machines in the quarter, down from nearly 74 million a year earlier.
For buyers, the message is that the cheap-upgrade window has closed for now. For the industry, the quarter is a reminder that the PC remains a cyclical business, and that a cost shock in a handful of components can still bend the whole market’s trajectory within a single season.
Component suppliers, meanwhile, face their own reckoning. Capacity built for the surge in memory demand will take time to rebalance, and vendors are expected to prioritise configurations that protect margin while the shortage lasts, which may mean fewer budget models on shelves this winter than shoppers are used to finding.
