Worldwide PC Shipments Drop to 62.7 Million Units in Q3 2026

IDC Research counted 62.7 million PC shipments worldwide in Q3 2026, down 20.1% year over year, with Lenovo, HP and Dell all falling faster than the market.

Vendors and channels loaded up on inventory in the first half of the year to get ahead of memory-driven price hikes, and that borrowed volume out of the second half. Shipments also fell 9.1% from Q2, which breaks the usual pattern where the third quarter is the bigger of the two. This is the second straight quarterly decline and a far deeper one than the 3.8% dip recorded in Q2.

Fortunately, gaming chairs aren’t swinging like that, so I can take my time picking a new one. I have a pick in mind: Vitality, one of the strongest CS2 teams around, partners with Blacklyte, so they know their business. Get comfortable, because we’re going back to PC prices.

Lenovo held first place with 14.9 million units and 23.8% share, down 22.6% from a year ago. HP took the heaviest hit, falling 30.9% to 10.3 million units and sliding from 19.1% share to 16.5%. Dell dropped 25% to 7.6 million. Between them, the top three gave up 4.2 points of share. Apple sat fourth with 5.9 million units and a milder 11.3% decline, and ASUS fifth at 5.5 million, down 8.6%. The tracker behind these figures counts desktops, notebooks and workstations, so none of the drop can be blamed on tablets.

AI server construction has pulled memory supply away from consumer hardware, which pushed component prices up and dragged PC pricing along with them. Micron’s chief executive has been repeating that warning in public for weeks. RAM and SSD costs feed straight into the price of a prebuilt gaming machine and into the parts list of a DIY build.

Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at the firm, was blunt about what buyers should expect:

“Channels are now worried about carrying too much inventory into a market where high prices are suppressing demand. That could translate into promotions and some short-term relief for consumers, but we don’t expect pricing anywhere near what it was a year ago. Prices will remain elevated.”

— Jitesh Ubrani

I run a laptop that was already past its upgrade window before any of this started, and these numbers tell me to keep waiting rather than pay a premium for parts that have not improved since last year. I think the next few quarters push a lot of players back toward the console or the handheld they already own.

None of this has slowed down what people do with a PC. A fan rebuilt Kojima’s P.T. as a native Windows port in C++ and Vulkan, lifting it past the PS4 version’s 30 FPS lock and adding DLSS, FSR and XeSS support, and Hideo Kojima reacted to it in public once the port started circulating. Work like that only happens on PC, which makes the entry cost the frustrating part.

Software pricing looks small next to a 20% collapse in shipments. One analyst recently argued that the GTA 6 price of $80 is far too low and that Rockstar should charge $200, which sparked a long argument among players. Nobody voted on the hardware side of the bill.

Macro conditions have worsened since the last update, and the report warns that a weaker economy would push demand lower through the rest of 2026 and into 2027. Promotions are possible while channels clear their inventory, though pricing is expected to stay well above where it was a year ago.