The PC Boom Is Over — AI Just Killed It

For nine straight quarters, the global PC market kept growing. That streak is now over. Worldwide PC shipments fell 4.9% year on year in Q2 2026, dropping to 68.2 million units — the first contraction after nine consecutive quarters of growth, according to IDC. And the reason isn’t that people have stopped wanting new computers.

The Numbers, Brand by Brand

Apple was the only top-five brand to actually grow shipments this quarter, buoyed by continued MacBook demand and the launch of the MacBook Neo. Every other major brand shipped fewer units than a year ago.

It’s the Memory, Not the Market

AI data centers are projected to consume as much as 70% of all memory chips produced in 2026, diverting supply away from the PC and consumer electronics segments and placing extraordinary strain on the entire semiconductor supply chain. That leaves less DRAM and NAND for PC makers, and the chips that do reach them cost significantly more. Prices for DDR5 and LPDDR5X memory modules have surged by 40–60% since mid-2025.

The practical result is that laptops and desktops — especially in the mid-range bracket — are quietly getting more expensive to build, and those costs get passed on to buyers. Many people are simply choosing to wait rather than pay more than they expected.

Omdia’s June 2026 survey found that 53% of B2B channel partners reported customers were delaying planned PC refreshes until market conditions improve.

If you’ve noticed laptops getting pricier in India this year too, our laptop buying guide covers what’s still worth buying at each price point despite the component squeeze.

When Does This Get Better?

Not soon. The memory shortage, rooted in the structural imbalance between surging AI data centre demand and finite semiconductor fabrication capacity, is not expected to ease until early 2028. IDC’s full-year forecast now points to an 11.3% annual decline in PC shipments, with an even sharper drop expected in Q4 2026.

There is one cautiously positive data point: Omdia’s analysis suggests memory price increases could ease somewhat in the second half of 2026 — not reverse, just slow down. That’s a long way from prices returning to where they were a year ago, but it’s something.

For a deeper look at how this memory crunch connects to the same price hikes affecting smartphones and tablets, our coverage of the global chip shortage has the full picture.

The Takeaway

The PC market’s slowdown isn’t about people falling out of love with computers — it’s an AI infrastructure story that has an unintended side effect on everyday buyers. Until new memory fab capacity comes online or AI server demand cools, The era of steadily declining PC prices has, at least for now, come to an end.