Gartner Says Global PC Shipments Hit Lowest Level Since Early 2023, Citing Fewer Low-Cost PCs and a Shift to Higher-End Models
TECHWORLD ·
✦ AI Summary
Gartner said global PC shipments in the third quarter totaled 55.4 million units.
That was down 22.4% from the same quarter last year and marked the lowest level since early 2023.
Gartner said the surge in component prices and their pass-through to consumer prices were behind the decline.
Gartner released preliminary findings on global PC shipments for the third quarter, saying shipments totaled 55.4 million units. That was down 22.4% from the same quarter last year and marked the lowest level since early 2023. Gartner said the decline in third-quarter global PC shipments reflected a surge in component prices and their pass-through to consumer prices.
Namrata Banerjee, Gartner Research director, said rising memory and storage costs were reflected in PC prices. He said DRAM costs in the second quarter were 5 times higher than a year earlier, and that PC makers passed higher component costs on to consumers. Banerjee cited price increases as the reason for the sharp drop in third-quarter PC shipments, and said that the cause of the shipment decline in the third quarter of 2026 was not excess inventory but higher prices, manufacturers' limited prioritization of component allocation, and a shift toward higher-spec products.
As a result, supply of low-cost PCs declined, and the burden on consumers to replace PCs increased. Companies focused on investments in specific areas such as workstations and AI PC rather than on PC adoption.
According to Gartner, the global PC market in the third quarter this year showed a common trend in which all six leading PC makers saw shipments decline. Among them, Lenovo's shipments fell 22.4% from a year earlier, but it retained the No. 1 spot in the market. HP also saw shipments fall 30.9%, but held onto second place.
There were, however, differences in the scale of the decline. HP posted the largest drop among the top six vendors, which Gartner attributed to its relatively high share of price-sensitive consumer products and its relatively high share of price-sensitive mainstream commercial products. Lenovo, by contrast, maintained its competitiveness on the back of a large supply chain and a broad AI portfolio as well as a broad infrastructure portfolio.
Apple posted the smallest shipment decline among the top six vendors. It lifted its market share by 1.7 percentage points, helped by the performance of its flagship MacBook lineup. These differences in company performance were highlighted in contrast, with Lenovo's supply chain and portfolio, HP's product mix, and Apple's MacBook-centered sales strength all cited.
Source: TECHWORLD · Lee Gwang-jae
Original: https://www.epnc.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=408086
References
This article was produced with the help of an automated content generation algorithm.
Source: TECHWORLD
View originalThis article was summarized and organized by BizCrush based on the original article from TECHWORLD. For exact quotations and full details, please refer to the original article.