Worldwide PC shipments have fallen by nearly five percent to 68.2 million units, according to research conducted by the International Data Corporation (IDC.) This is the first decline in two years after nine straight quarters of growth. This all started in the tail-end of 2025, as you can see in the chart below. That’s right around when global memory crunch went from an annoyance to a full-blown crisis.
Anyone who follows the tech industry even the slightest already knows the reason behind this downturn. It’s the AI-driven memory shortage, which IDC says isn’t expected to end until 2028. This has caused price hikes across the entire industry and beyond.
However, there’s another wrinkle to this story. IDC has also reported that revenues are still rising for PC manufacturers because “vendors are pushing price increases through faster than demand is dropping.” We are bearing the brunt of memory crunch, and not companies. Same as it ever was.
“The real story here is the disconnect between units and dollars: shipments are falling, but revenue is climbing,” said Jitesh Ubrani, researcher at IDC. “Vendors are bracing for further price hikes into 2027.”
Ubrani also expects an even steeper decline later in the year, as current inventory starts to run out and consumers are hit with more price increases. He warns that this could put a serious hamper on the typical PC upgrade cycle.
There’s one company that has not only weathered the storm, but actually posted increased PC shipments. It’s Apple, and this is because of the red-hot MacBook Neo. The company shipped 800,000 more PCs this quarter when compared to the same quarter in 2025. This increased its market share to nearly ten percent, from 8.5 percent.
Of course, Apple isn’t immune to memory-related price hikes and the latest one slightly could cut into the value proposition of the Neo. The entry-level MacBook went up from $600 to $700. However, other Apple computers are being hit much harder. An entry-level Air now costs $1,300.
“There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,” outgoing CEO Tim Cook recently said. “We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for consumer products.”
Again, those “memory guys” raised their prices so Apple did the same to us. They aren’t in the business of eating any of those increases. Incidentally, Apple recently reported that it had $68.5 billion cash on hand for this most recent quarter, which is a 41 percent increase year-over-year. The company is currently valued at over $4.6 trillion.
