- 2025 saw healthy PC market growth, but 2026 will be far more turbulent
- Memory and storage prices are rising, and that’s not good for consumers
- Budget units could experience the biggest price increases
Despite a 9.2% year-over-year increase in 2025 (and 10.1% in Q4 2025), analysts at Omdia are concerned that global PC shipments could decline in 2026 due to rising costs and increasing pressure from AI data centers.
The firm’s data claims that mainstream PC memory costs will rise by around 70% throughout 2025, with suppliers even starting to warn customers of price increases towards the end of the year. And even more worryingly, analysts have already predicted a further increase of 50% in the first quarter of 2026.
With memory manufacturers prioritizing high-margin DRAM servers and HBM intended for data centers, production of mainstream DDR memory for PCs has suffered little and supply is not meeting demand. SSD costs also increased by 40% by 2025.
PC prices will rise, shipping volumes will fall
Omdia expects memory shortages to affect PC sales in 2026, with OEMs likely to focus on high-end devices due to rising component costs. Mid- and low-tier configurations may also end up shipping with less RAM or storage to counter the limited supply.
“With tight 2026 supply, the industry is emphasizing high-end SKUs and leaner mid- and low-end configurations to protect margins,” explained chief analyst Ben Yeh.
Trendforce also released a similar report in late 2025, predicting a 5.4% year-over-year decline in global notebook shipments for 2026. Notebooks accounted for about four out of five (79%) of all PC shipments in 2025 as of Omdia where PCs took the much smaller market share.
Additionally, a 10.1% drop in notebook shipments could be the case if conditions worsen, Trendforce warns.
IDC also agreed that shipments could fall this year. “IDC expects the PC market to be very different in 12 months, given how quickly the memory situation is evolving,” explained research director Jean Philippe Bouchard.
Market forecasts were not released by IDC, but the firm’s analysts warned of extreme volatility, lower average memory configurations and further price increases.
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