Worldwide shipments of desktops, notebooks and workstations fell 21.2 percent year on year to 58.1 million units in the third quarter, according to Omdia, with IDC estimating a 20.1 percent decline to 62.7 million units. The downturn follows a first-half rush in which manufacturers and corporate buyers pulled orders forward to beat anticipated price increases, leaving the channel with excess inventory and fewer buyers in Q3.
The AI industry’s appetite for memory and storage has left PC makers competing for increasingly expensive components: Omdia estimates DRAM and SSDs now account for nearly 40 percent of a PC’s component costs, up from around 15 percent, after more than fourfold price increases. Lenovo stayed the world’s largest vendor at 14.9 million units, down 22.6 percent; HP plunged nearly 31 percent to 10.3 million; Dell dropped 25 percent to 7.6 million. Apple declined a relatively mild 11 percent and gained share.
Omdia expects global PC shipments to fall another 24 percent year on year in the fourth quarter, followed by a further 7 percent decline across 2027, with no return to year-ago prices.